You are not the center of the universe, especially on the internet. That's the lesson that even the biggest web brands are learning fast, and we expect to see widespread cultural changes occur right along side their learning.
One week after we wrote about the leaked screenshots that have since been confirmed as the forthcoming home page design of AOL.com, where 3rd party content and functionality is now welcome to come on in through the front door, now Yahoo! is telling the press that its home page will soon be home to far more content from outside the Yahoo! network than ever before. The era of the walled garden is over.
Yahoo told the AP this morning that it will soon roll out the first major redesign of its home page in two years. That redesign will host a wide variety of widgets from rival services like movie links from Netflix, music from iTunes and Amazon. It will be something like the Facebook platform, but with more prominent placement for 3rd party services than even Facebook offers. Yahoo has talked about this plan before, but now is making a media push in preparation for action.
Left: The awesome logo for this week's Yahoo Hack Day
Yahoo's plans are similar to what AOL appears to be planning, where activity updates 3rd party social networks and possibly an on-site RSS reader will bring new functionality to AOL users.
As we wrote last week about AOL's strategy:
Aggregation of content from around the web is quite likely a key part of the future for almost all successful websites; the web is too large to pretend you're an island any more, even if your network is sprawling it just can't compete with the options offered by the web at large. While mainstream users used to think that AOL was the internet for years, they are not so naive any more.
We've written here about the new class of powerhouse sites that specialize in bricolage, the art of assembling found objects. (Think BoingBoing and Neatorama). We've also written about why online noise is good for you. We don't expect the big portals to go as far with this strategy at first as the edge publishers have, but just like Google's indexing the open web blew the Yahoo! directory out of the water in search - so too is a new paradigm in aggregate publishing out-competing brand-selected, human edited portals.
Right: Hugh MacLeod puts it frankly.
It's an exciting time. We look forward to seeing how the rest of the world changes as the leading sources of information online turn towards a model of intelligent collecting and sharing, as opposed to a closed, self-facing broadcast model.
Comments
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Hooray for the good guys! And I think this is just the tip of the iceberg from Yahoo. When I read what's published from their research center, use Pulse 2.0 for Mobile, Pipes, FireEagle I see a new era in end user utility.
...no wonder the Microsoft wanted to assimilate them so bad, they don't want us to have all this cool stuff that doesn't require Windows to use!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9BosxTWZE4
Posted by: Todd | September 12, 2008 12:59 PM
Every few years, we seem to identify key trends in online social interaction and information interaction. Internet users are looking for more control and more convenience in the online lives and the big guys are realizing that, as you say, the walled garden is going away. But, it's only going away for displaying/distributing basic information. I think we'll be seeing new tiers of information where some of it is based on a premium and that's what the big guys are going to keep behind their walls.
I think it all still revolves around the attention of the user.
Posted by: JP
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September 12, 2008 1:03 PM
It's not just the big portals knocking down walls. MTV is opening its video vaults as well:
http://mashery.wordpress.com/2008/09/11/mashery-powers-mtv-networks-content-api/
Posted by: Mike | September 12, 2008 1:12 PM
This is a great example of what is happening on the API demand side. At Mashery, we provide the necessary infrastructure for the would-be suppliers of content and services to the new Yahoo! home page and other similar sites. Over the past few months, we've seen a significant uptick in API launch plans among many of the world's largest media companies.
A couple months ago, the New York Times got a ton of attention when they announced an API was coming soon. Since that announcement, we've been contacted by several dozen large media companies to find out what this means, what the implications are for the industry, and what they need to do to participate in and benefit from this trend. MTV launched their (Mashery-powered) API last week (after several months of planning), and we're currently working with several other great companies on new API programs that will launch in the coming weeks and months.
Exciting stuff.
Posted by: Oren Michels | September 12, 2008 1:12 PM
Thanks for the mention, Marshall. Great post.
[*cough*] It's "MacLeod", not "McLeod" ;-)
Posted by: hugh macleod | September 12, 2008 1:48 PM
Well, this is certainly exciting.
But how does it compare to Google's own personalized homes, iGoogle?
Posted by: D. | September 14, 2008 9:46 AM