Ray’s web 2.0 business minitests: Yahoo! Groups
November 09, 2006 |
Theses minitests are purely about real business potential, not about the technology behind it.
Undoubtedly, Yahoo! Groups is the leader among the SIGS (Same Interest groups). It doesn’t matter what you are interested in, the chances are that there are numerous Yahoo! groups which represent your hobbies or interests. There are literally millions of Yahoo! groups, some of which only have a few members and others have hundreds of thousands of members.
It is simple to join, once your have a Yahoo! account and email address. This all takes about 10 minutes to complete and then you can search for groups or make groups yourself.
Yahoo! Groups has a simple user interface. The Yahoo! style takes some getting used to it. There are a number of small objects and pieces of text which you can click in order to fully view the possibilities. This is not the most user friendly environment, Yahoo! should do something about it for the sake of lesser experienced users.
Once you know what’s there, you will notice that you can make databases, upload documents or photos and write out polls among your group members.
Personally I never knew why Yahoo! separated Yahoo! Groups from Yahoo! 360 which is more oriented towards personal profiling and blogging.
The best use for Yahoo! Groups seems to be in finding specialists from a recruitments perspective. You can search for very specialized people by just finding the specialized groups e.g. Six Sigma or J2EE programmers. Here is one example of such a group.
SummaryI got a hunch that Yahoo! Groups and Yahoo! 360 will be merged in the not so far future. Yahoo! as a company has huge resources and I don’t expect them to stay on the sideline while Myspace and others are making huge profits.
Its use is limited, but do add some groups to your profile and yahoo account. The good thing is that you get the best online email service online with it. We’ll just have to wait and see what it will develop into…
| Key-web 2.0 factor | Points (1-10) | Remarks |
| 1) Manage and view profile |
3 |
You have to do that on Yahoo! 360 separately |
| 2) Manage contacts |
9 |
Very Good: start your group and upload or download cvs or txt files. |
| 3) Communication options |
4 |
Just group emails |
| 4) Effective business use |
5 |
Limited within the SIG, often recruiter oriented |
| 5) Growing potential |
9 |
Market-leader, where will the yahoo billions go to…? |
| 6) Money making potential |
7 |
Depends on the insight of their staff if online services will be integrated |
| Total |
37 |
Verdict: Limited use, a lot of potential |
NB: please forward me your ideas or request portals to be tested..Ray (bel3bel@yahoo.com)
