Yahoo Meme: Hands On With Yahoo's Twitter 'Clone'
A few weeks ago, we heard that Yahoo was readying a Portuguese-only Twitter clone under the name Yahoo Meme. Today, we finally got our invitation to try this new service, and while it is indeed an interesting micro-blogging service, we wouldn't go as far as calling it a "Twitter killer." Instead of cloning Twitter's communications features like @ replies and direct messages, Meme goes back to the basics of micro-blogging. Users can upload photos and post text (without a 140 character limit), YouTube videos (just copy and paste the URL), and links to MP3 files.
Meme is currently in private beta testing and it is unclear when it will be publicly available.
Core Feature: Repost
Meme uses the same one-way follow system as Twitter, and items from users you follow will appear in your stream, mixed in with your own items. Interestingly, users can also comment on links and stories from users they do not follow, but Yahoo Meme puts an interesting twist on the commenting system, though. One of the central features of Meme is the ability to 'repost' (in Twitter parlance, this would be a retweet). The repost button (and not a comment button) appears next to every post, photo, video, or MP3 file. In order to comment on a story, you have to repost the story to your own feed.
At first, this system feels a bit odd - after all, you might not necessarily want to share every item you comment on in your own feed - but it turns out to be a great way to discover new users to follow. Especially, because every repost comes with a link to the person you reposted it from, and a link to the user who originally posted it to Meme as well.
Some Features We Would Like to See
Obviosuly, Meme is only a beta product and it misses a number of features that we would love to see. It would be great, for example, if we could actually upload MP3s instead of having to find a link to a file, or if Meme accepted videos from other video services besides YouTube. We would also love to see a bookmarklet or plugin that would allow us to share items without having to copy and paste links. Unlike most of Yahoo's products, Meme doesn't have an API yet, so third-party developers can't write new desktop and web tools for it yet.
As of now, Meme does not feature any privacy controls - everything you post on Meme is automatically visible for every other member on the service.
Only In Portuguese For Now - What About the Rest of the World?
Given the generic name and address (meme.yahoo.com), we would not be surprised if Yahoo was testing meme in the Portuguese-speaking market before rolling it out to for more languages. If you want to give it a try, however, the features are self-explaining enough so that you don't really need to speak Portuguese to use it.
Back to Basics
After using Meme for a while, it doesn't quite seem right to call it a Twitter clone. Instead, Yahoo Meme is really more of a back-to-basics micro-blogging service that feels a lot more like Posterous or Tumblr than Twitter.
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This sounds more like a Tumblr clone than a Twitter clone.
Got my invite last night as well...don't speak Portuguese, but it's easy enough to figure out. Pretty basic so far, but it's a good start at least.
Posted by: xxdesmus.myopenid.com
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May 26, 2009 8:52 AM
There's a live, all-your-friends Tumblr feed?
I would say your observation of it being closer to Posterous is accurate. Not sure I would spend a ton of time in this space if I was Yahoo.
Their sweet spot (in general) is unsophisticated web users, who have an even harder time seeing the initial value in Micro-Blogging or Twitter.
Handfuls will just use Facebook's updates, The adventurous will use Freindfeed (or maybe discover Posterous) and the masses will get hooked on Twitter.
I don't want two places to maintain communication and community, unless it played nice with FriendFeed. Even then, I would stick to my "family" on Twitter.
The more options we have to update status and share links, the more some of them will get neglected.
And that's my disconnected comment for the day. Good coverage RWW team.
Justyn
Repost indeed is a killer-feature, as it helps disseminate information through your social network.
This is precisely why the ability to create personal channels to route information is essential, otherwise it will only add to information overflow.
I recommend looking at ISS (Instant Syndicating Standards), which not only covers reposts and personal channels, but also describes the taglink concept - a way to chain channels together. ISS is a set of open standards hopes to bring people closer together to discuss common interests and share information in a more open and democratic manner.
More information:
Repost indeed is a killer-feature, as it helps disseminate information through your social network.
This is precisely why the ability to create personal channels to route information is essential, otherwise it will only add to information overflow.
I recommend looking at ISS (Instant Syndicating Standards), which not only covers reposts and personal channels, but also describes the taglink concept - a way to chain channels together. ISS is a set of open standards that hopes to bring people closer together to discuss common interests and share information in a more open and democratic manner.
More information:
ISS White Paper
ISS News
Vitor Lourenco's project? http://www.vlourenco.com/
Maybe they are trying to reach Brazil and Portugal?
Uh, typo? "Obviosuly"
Otherwise, to offer something perhaps more useful, I think that microblogging — or really just "conversational interactivity" will pretty much become a standard feature on a lot of sites. That Yahoo is playing with this kind of makes sense, but as a stand-alone project, I think Yahoo is revealing more of its org-structure than really thinking through how microblogging should be part of an overall strategy.
I mean, Twitter's single stream IS their org chart. Yahoo, well, not so much.
Posted by: factoryjoe.com
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May 26, 2009 7:35 PM
we have a similar service since 1 August 2007.
You can post from web, mobile but we are very small and no one sees :(
In theese days we look for investor and we have in our todo list many features ;)
I agree, this sounds more like a tumblr clone than a twitter clone.
Why do they target Porteguese? They want to create the next Orkut?
So it is only Spanish and Portuguese at this time?
It will never work in the long run unless Yahoo lets any email have access. Twitter has one up on them in this respect. Having to create a yahoo account just to be part of the Meme community is a lame idea. Then again yahoo is a sellout so go figure.
i am amazed to see that www.socialcreeper.com uses meme for social networking. Impressive service...
Mike
I like the name
it's more like tumbir clone....
It will be interesting to see how this takes off. When they created Buzz many believed it would not go anywhere, but it's been a successful feature for Yahoo! Will the subtle difference be enough to distinguish this service from Twitter? We'll see in time...
I have heard that yahoo7 is gonna buy wovre, is it true?
yahoo meme for english version now available
Personally, I see Meme being more of a MySpace replacement than something that will challenge Twitter. It's tacky and it's going to be full of people posting ridiculous images instead of text.
I had a bit of a rant about it on my blog:
http://webtoastie.co.uk/yahoo-meme-the-new-myspace/
I didn't even know it was only in Portuguese at the beginning. I got my account now and I set it up in English, even though I'm a native Portuguese speaker. In fact, I learned this just now (reading this blog). Funny.
twitter and others are no doubt nice, but I always wanted to bring in a concept to microblogging !
I hereby post a Review-Request for www.emote.in ,
A microblogging service; which is a platform to -
1. Make yourself heard, comment on news, stories and current affair.
2. Share your experiences, memories and events with your friends and family.
3. Connect with different people with similar emotional attributes as yours.
(eg: if attrocities on animals make you sad, connect with others who share the same feeling)
4. Jot-down your experiences. You usually have so many things to say - a constant stream of thoughts, comments and observations running through your head continuously.
5. Last but not the least, has everything (and much more) that twiiter has.
6. A wonderful timeline coming shortly (in few weeks)
I LOVE meme. I know that it doesn't have many users, but I have fallen in love with the clean interface and focus on the integration of multimedia. My only complaint is that it doesn't interface with other social networks. I can understand why, but as others have said in previous posts, you can only pay attention to so many profiles before some start getting neglected. I have setup my meme to rss to ping.fm which updates everything else. I couldn't be happier!
If you want your posts to go from twitter -> meme or meme -> twitter you can use:
http://twitter-meme.com/
(disclaimer, I built it)
bizarre...funny the picked Portuguese to start with...cool idea but doubtful it will put a dent in twitters user base.
chat with people near you
just love new yahoo product meme, Meme is like a Twitter only but meme has some good features which twitter dosen't have....i have started using meme @ http://meme.yahoo.com/tanveer/