When it reported its most recent quarter, Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) vowed to dedicate itself to more services that incorporate social-networking principles. Its newly revamped Yahoo! Bookmarks service seems to be an early example of that strategy.
Yahoo!'s already purchased Del.icio.us, the popular site for sharing and storing bookmarks online, last year. Del.icio.us recently hit the one-million-user benchmark, and you've probably noticed options to post to del.icio.us from many popular websites, including Fool.com.
But Yahoo! is playing up Yahoo! Bookmarks as "personal bookmarking," as opposed to "social bookmarking," for those of us who feel antisocial, I guess. Unlike Del.icio.us, where stored bookmarks are visible to anyone, Yahoo! Bookmarks provides users stored bookmarks only after they log into their own Yahoo! accounts. (It does, however, allow users to share their bookmarks with friends using Yahoo!'s email or IM tools.)
Services like these are definitely an idea whose time has come. I know I got frustrated with onerously long lists of bookmarks in my Web browser a long time ago, and it's nice to have an easily accessible, Internet-based way to keep and organize pertinent Web pages instead. As the Internet has matured, so has the old-school notion of information overload, and it's good that so many Internet companies are finding ways to help us organize the loads of info out there. That's been Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) overall mission with search, after all.
Much has been made about the success of companies like Google and News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace lately -- especially among those who have beating up on Yahoo! to a certain degree. However, while Yahoo! formidable rivals and plenty of challenges, it also retains a large user base. The user-generated, information-sharing technologies of Web 2.0 could bode very well for Yahoo!, provided the company can employ them in ways users enjoy and embrace. Meanwhile, Yahoo!'s history as a useful portal indicates that it can apply considerable muscle and innovation in helping its users organize their Internet experiences.
As useful and logical as Yahoo! Bookmarks may be, though, it seems slightly like reinventing Del.icio.us's wheel. Given investors' recent pessimism about Yahoo!, let's hope for a little more innovation from the Internet giant. Coming up with some killer social service that nobody else has thought of might be nice.
For more on Yahoo!, see the following Foolish articles:
- Yahoo!'s most recent quarter was subdued.
- Investors booed Yahoo! when it warned.
- Relive Yahoo!'s acquisition of del.icio.us.
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Alyce Lomax does not own shares of any of the companies mentioned.
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