Yahoo! 360 Beta Invites & Evaluation

So I got an invite from Barry to try out Yahoo! 360 Beta. The whole experience is quite overwhelming. When you get in there's so much stuff and so many different ways to view data, it's hard to tell up from down. The idea is good and there are loads O features within Yahoo 360 but the implementation is all wrong.

Here's my advice for the interface designers at Yahoo! 360.
Step away from your monitor and just look at the interface. Look how many different features, tabs, views, functions are on the screen. Then step back 3 years or so and think about what made blogs so popular [since blogging is one of the main draws to 360]. Then think about what a blogging application is... It's nothing more than a dumbed down CMS application. But instead of being a one size fits all CMS app, blogging apps are a tightly focused CMS application. Focused on enabling non-technical users who want to journal and document their lives on a web site. That's it. I mean, even the display mechanics are crude when compared to any old CMS app. The homepage is always a listing of posts in reverse chronological order... talk about inflexible, it's the ultimate in inflexibility [at least it use to be].

My point is this, people don't want a single app that does everything for them. That whole business model is a thing of the past. People want apps that are highly focused and targeted for many reasons. Just look at the word of vertical search engines, it's on the rise big time.

• When they log into the app they have an idea of what to expect.


• They're relatively confident the vendor they've chosen will keep up to speed on the latest advances and trends in their industry since their app is tightly focused on this single market.


• Users like branding and even though Blogger doesn't have every feature a user may want, its a brand name and that makes it cool... Kids love cool and so do adults.


• Getting things done is easy because the interface is simplified and allows a user to get what they need done quickly without getting distracted by a bunch of useless bells and whistles. The productivity factor is Critical!

Additionally, since the majority of internet users still don't even know what a blog is I think it'd probably be a good idea to not focus so much on the social networking slash community building aspect of this until they've got the ability for bloggers to customize the look and feel of their 360 blog. Just a thought.

What do you guys think about Yahoo! 360? Need an invite? Send an email to marketingshift [at] gmail.com and I'll hook you up.