Yahoo has a page dedicated to Wii, the Nintendo video game console, which is quite cool since it's rich in web 2.0 content, user generated or not, and really looks like Yahoo is now a completely different experience. Like it's web 2.0 for them too. And that's the problem.

Brand without a clue

The Wii page on Yahoo is interesting as it's full of external, user generated content such as Flickr images, tags Wii-related from Del.icio.us and MyWeb, features stories, and useful links. The following is the Wii - Yahoo! Games page screen shot.

Now, this page is nice, it has enough web 2.0 features to make you reach the informations you were looking for, you can actually be part of the content as you as a user could be an active user of this very same page. The problems start if you look at the big Yahoo picture, it's web presence that is.

Bad for the users, bad for the business

One of the things with web 2.0 is content, informations, is coming from different sources, different formats, different languages. User generated or editorially produced, the heterogeneity of informations already is a disturbing factor you should cope with if you are thinking of offering external sources infos. Your user should have access to as much as possible of relevant content coming from as many as possible relevant, and recognized, sources without having to learn a different navigation scheme, or interface, for every and each chunk of info or every different format.

You just take the atomized info, that is a text news, a photo, a video, then you'll clean the noise off and embed that in your page. Your page aggregates external sources, should they be text news, photos, videos, RSS or whatever you are think of. The whole experience should be of a homogeneous collecting point that uses what users recognize as your (well) established web presence: the navigation scheme is always the same, terms defining sections are always the same, there's a limited amount of custom option offered. Fai

Yahoo?

The problem with Yahoo it looks like they are trying to adapt each and every single part of their web galaxy to the content they're offering or the client/user they're serving. It looks like in Yahoo opinion, every content should be treated differently, every user should be treated differently depending on the fact that they are movies fan or video games fan (non considering maybe you could be both). The rush to make everybody happy is a no win game if you are not imposing some rule or defining a uniform brand presence. And this is more true in the case of the web, where you have to deal with a theoretically infinite audience with different needs and interests, different cultural/language approaches and so on.

The Yahoo Games case

Can somebody please explain to me what's the difference between Yahoo! Video Games and Yahoo! Games?

Yahoo! Video Games

Yahoo! Games

Why selecting the Wii link on Yahoo! Video Games lands me on a page, while following the Wii link on Yahoo! Games directs me to the above mentioned Wii - Yahoo! Games page?

Back to the root

Consider the Yahoo web headquarter, www.yahoo.com, its the good old web 1.0 portal, filled with infos and links and resources, with just some web 2.0 topping in the shape of Ajax objects here and there.

Yahoo.com

But obviously we are chasing every single user needs here, and to do this you know what we can do? We'll have a personal page, as to deliver a custom personal experience to every single web user of this planet: take this, My Yahoo!

My Yahoo!

Dad, you should add BETA to be really 2.0. You know?

But no, this is not web 2.0 enough to me! (You can hear the top guys shouting this after finding out their children were preferring something more 2.0, whatever that means to them). And that's why now we are lucky enough to have... MyWeb BETA.

My Web BETA

Yeah, but I have lots of interests, people say I'm a very complex kind of guy, you know? No worries, here we are with the right choice for you: Yahoo! 360º (and yes, it's BETA!)

Yahoo! 360º BETA

What the news?

Ok, now bring me to the news. Just let me know what's going on around. Not so easy, mate. What are you exactly interested in? Sport? General all around news? Finance, maybe? Because, every type of information should be treated in a different way. Do you like music?

Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/)

Yahoo! Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com/)

Yahoo! Sports (http://sports.yahoo.com/)

Yahoo! Music (http://music.yahoo.com/)

Mail & ads

There's then the Yahoo! web mail service, which is another BETA thing (we are talking here of the new web mail interface. The fact is it looks like they really had no other option to permit a misleading ad banner to appear in the very same mail interface.

Yahoo! Mail beta

Yahoo! Mail beta. The misleading banner

Last but not least

The final pearl is about photos. How much did they spend to buy Flickr? Is there any doubt that Flickr is the best photo sharing community on the web? Is there any doubt Flickr is one of the best web 2.0 services out there? Do Yahoo! really needed to have their own photo sharing site? (The answer to this last question is dramatically yes!)

Yahoo! Photos (http://new.photos.yahoo.com/)