Yahoo! : Buy WordPress or SixApart!
I use WordPress and it has glitches and “cludgey” aspects (like the time I thought I’d lost all my posts :0). But overall it’s pretty smooth and, I gotta say, it’s a lot better blogging platform than Yahoo!’s 360 (although upgrades are coming). That’s the weak link in Yahoo!’s social media strategy. In my view, 360 is not as easy or elegant as some of the other platforms, even (and maybe especially) Blogger.
But Yahoo! does support Six Apart and WordPress through its small business hosting. In fact, the new Yahoo! Local & Maps blog is on WordPress and so is Yahoo!’s Bradley Horowitz’s blog. Here’s his 360 blog, which points to his “real blog” on WordPress.
Quickly Yahoo! should buy one of these services — Six Apart has a richer array of products — and integrate it as the blogging platform in lieu of 360. They’ll get lots more people (consumers and small businesses) generating content and accelerate their entire social media strategy for Local, small businesses and beyond . . .
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Greg Sterling is the founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, a consulting and research firm focused on online consumer and advertiser behavior and the relationship between the Internet and traditional media, with an emphasis on the local marketplace.
You know what, here’s one thing that gets me about Yahoo 360.
If I want to direct someone to my blog (which I don’t really use but have running), I have to send them this horrible link:
blog.360.yahoo.com/blog/;_ylt=AmVnCb_Q61JjXuStamjpI_DlAOJ3
Why couldn’t the link be:
blog.360.yahoo.com/lorenbake
Despite their blogging platform and URL unfriendliness I believe 360 is bound to live up to its name and become the cornerstone of the Yahoo Social foundation – especially with the local and yahoo photo integration.
Seems like they’re also using that basic blog and avatar networking model which has worked so well in Japan or Korea, but has not really caught on in the US.. or became outdated 4 years ago.
360 also gets decent rankings in Google, my profile site is #2 for my name :
http://www.google.com/search?q=loren+baker
Yahoo 360 certainly does support the “Simple URL”. In fact if you go to blog.360.yahoo.com/lorenbake it’s working.
To enable this, 360 users, simply go to Blog Settings page and check the box titled Simple URL. This is not turned on by default because many users don’t want their identification public.
The blog settings page provide several other useful permissions settings.
Try Vox. New from SixApart in “preview” now, so you’ll need an invitation.
http://www.vox.com
I’m not really sure Yahoo! could buy WordPress, given it’s open source blogware, but given they’ve already got a relationship with Automattic, there’s no reason why they couldn’t implement it anyway (as they are already doing in some ways).
Thanks for setting me on the right path there Kevin. Perhaps a Blogger or MySpace style function of naming the URL would help with that privacy fear.
Cheers, Loren
Yahoo running Word Press?
Now that’s a scary thought. Have you ever tried dealing with Yahoo’s customer service? You can’t complain about the service because there is none!