A common point of debate within Yahoo! was whether employees should feel compelled to use Y properties (“eat your own dogfood”) or whether said properties should have to compete on pure merit to earn internal usage. But in any case, there’s always pressure, even if subliminal, to use internal products.
I’ve free of such influence for six weeks now. What Yahoo! services do I still use? Which ones not so much?
Yahoo Answers: not so much. Even the 1 point-per-day for visiting doesn’t entice me. If I had a burning question that would be a good fit for a community answer, I’d go back.
Yahoo Mail: all the time. I used Yahoo mail long before I worked there, and I’ll be using it long after.
Yahoo News: almost daily. Still a good collection of global, national, and local news.
My Yahoo & Finance: multiple times daily. I’ve peeked at iGoogle, but the Y is too comfy, and the competion isn’t easy enough to get comfortable with. But often the page takes up to 30 seconds to load. If that doesn’t improve, I’ll leave.
Yahoo Search: still my default. But only because of tweaks I put in place with SearchMonkey. The baseline quality of results is right on par with Google. I still recommend Y search to friends and family.
Yahoo Maps: rarely used. Google maps is just better, particularly street view.
Yahoo 360: Abandoned. Tons of site bugs, no fixes on the horizon. In fact, they’ve announced shuttering of the service, to be replaced with some unspecified alternative. But who knows when that will happen? So the Meadblog is on hold until further notice. I’ll still check once in a while for postings from friends and family.
Yahoo front page: Still use it to check whether wireless is working. Most often with ping, not HTTP though. :-)
What Yahoo services do you still use? Comment below. -m
Update: a few more inspired by the comments.
Delicious: still use, mainly through the browser extension.
Flickr: still use, but I’m not much of a photos guy. I’ll be using it again shortly to upload screenshots for a blog-post tutorial I’m writing.
del.icio.us, but i am worried about their long term future.
i use no other yahoo services myself. i sometimes look at friend’s flickr.
directly: delicious, Flickr. Indirectly Yahoo! groups.
Having been involved with setting up local political campaigns, I’d give Y! mail the majority market share for consumer email addresses, followed by hotmail. If the merger did/does go ahead, MS would own the email addresses of the planet.