Bloglines Could Be Ask Jeeves’ My Yahoo
Bloglines, acquired by Ask Jeeves roughly a fortnight before it was itself acquired by IAC, is doing some interesting stuff. It recently introduced a package tracking capability and it intends to add weather, stocks and other personalized information (via RSS feeds). It already has news.
Watch it morph into a MyYahoo!-like application. If thoughtfully integrated with Jeeves’ search (and by extension the rest of the IAC “network”), it could be the sticky anchor (how’s that for a mixed metaphor?) for the entire system.
I think that MyYahoo! is the model for “personalization” for the masses and Bloglines could emulate that functionality/ease of use. Plus the blogging component offers the potential to develop considerable user-generated content (ala Yahoo! 360).
So rather than Jeeves being the front door, Bloglines could be an alternate way into the content, search results, verticals and ads in the IAC portfolio. We’ll see.
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Greg Sterling is managing editor of The Kelsey Group. He also leads The Kelsey Group’s the Interactive Local Media program, focusing on local search. Greg came to The Kelsey Group from TechTV’s “Working the Web,” the first national television show dedicated to e-business and the Internet.
