Yahoo Quietly Launches Mobile Social-Networking Service
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TechWeb - The unannounced service apparently targets teens and young adults, for texting and photo and video sharing.
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(InfoWorld) - Yahoo has started testing a social-network component for Yahoo Answers, a search engine in which people post questions and answers that have become a highly popular service for theÂ company. On Thursday, Yahoo Answers Network debuted as a beta service designed to let the 90 million users of this question-and-answer search engine create "personal networks" with each other. They can also invite acquaintances who don't use Yahoo Answers to join their network. People will be able to see if other members of their Yahoo Answers network have posted an answer or a question or flagged someone else's question as interesting, according to Yahoo. Yahoo plans to continue enhancing Yahoo Answers Network with features like the ability to block and ignore users and to import contacts from other services like the Yahoo Messenger instant messaging network. The move is consistent with Yahoo's aggressive strategy in social computing, a hallmark of the Web 2.0 era. In recent years, Yahoo has been busy acquiring social-computing companies like Flickr, del.icio.us, and, more recently, MyBlogLog as well as revamping existing sites and services with social features like tagging and user-generated content. Yahoo Answers is a bright spot for the company. Archrival Google had a competing service called Google Answers that never took off and was put out to pasture last year. In late December of last year, market researcher Hitwise Pty. reported that among Q&A-type search engines, Yahoo Answers held a 96 percent of share of visits in the U.S. Answerbag ranked second with 2.04 percent, and Microsoft's Windows Live Q&A came in third with 1.02 percent. By giving this new feature to Yahoo Answers, with its large and growing audience, Yahoo might be able to improve its standing in social networking. Its blogging and social networking-site Yahoo 360, introduced in March 2005, hasn't become as popular as Yahoo expected. In November at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo's vice president of product strategy, said the company might remake Yahoo 360, but the company hasn't rolled out any significant enhancements to it yet. Last year there were insistent rumors that Yahoo was shopping around for a social-networking site and that it held conversations with Facebook that didn't yield a deal. However, Yahoo has massive numbers of users in services like Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Mail, Flickr, del.icio.us and Yahoo Photos that some analysts have pointed out could be leveraged to create social networks. Yahoo Answers Network could indicate a strategy focused on creating distinct social networks within individual and already popular services, rather than on having a single social-networking site that competes head to head with the likes of MySpace.com, Friendster and Facebook. In fact, new social-networking providers are targeting their sites toward specific audiences and topics, instead of trying to cast a broad net like MySpace.com and the other leaders in this market. More information about Yahoo Answers Network can be found here.
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Location-based services appeared here, there, and everywhere at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, as service providers maneuvered to take advantage of the increasing number of mobile phones shipping with integrated GPS (Global Positioning System) modules. Many of the services put the emphasis on finding your friends, not finding your way, as GPS evolves into more of a social tool.Yahoo announced a service called oneConnect&#160;that will to alert you when contacts arrive in town, warn you what mood they are in and show you a list of their recent e-mail messages that you have left unanswered. Yahoo intends to collect this information by combining status updates from sites like MySpace with GPS data from mobile phones and other information from Web mail and instant messaging services, a kind of aggregation for social networks. The service will go live by June, and will work with services including Google&#39;s Gmail and GoogleTalk, AOL Instant Messenger, and Microsoft&#39;s Outlook Web mail, said Marco Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo&#39;s Connected Life division.Communology, of Cologne, Germany, promoted a similar notion of social-network aggregation. Its&#160;Mobile Mash-Up&#160;can help sites like Facebook or Xing offer mobile users the ability to locate friends or tag photos with information about where they were taken. Communology sells &quot;white label&quot; services, using its Live Media software platform to build social-networking services for other brands.Linking up with Facebook is a strategy that also occurred to Wayfinder: it now offers a GPS widget for Facebook users called LocateMate. The company also introduced a forum for users of its software to share favorite routes and locations at&#160;MyWayfinder.com, with links to digital mapping tools such as Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth.GyPSii showed a BlackBerry client for its mobile social-networking service. It already offers versions for handsets running Symbian OS and Windows Mobile. The service allows users to share photos, videos and other information, tagging it with location data. Last year, GyPSii, based in Amsterdam, acquired Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Benefon, one of the first to build GPS modules into mobile phones.One of the strangest location-based mobile social networks revealed at the show allows users to share information about ... public toilets. MizPee.eu offers reviews of toilets in Barcelona, London, Paris and Rome posted by community members, with ratings for cleanliness and cost. Showgoers hoping to use the site to beat the long lines for toilets on site were disappointed, though: the nearest one listed is 1.45 kilometers from the showground.
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Yahoo Mobile can obtain localized search results, make calls from the results page, and obtain images. Shortcuts offer quick access to information, such as weather, stock quotes, sport scores and flight information.
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Blog: Bloggers report that Google and Yahoo are creating new social networks to try to get back in the game since their existing services haven't gained widespread adoption
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Yahoo Inc. on Wednesday said its  mobile services is now available for download on phones that  use Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Mobile operating system.
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Yahoo is conducting research for a new social job network called Kickstart.
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Internet media company Yahoo Inc.  YHOO.O on Wednesday launched its Web search service aimed at  mobile phone users in the United States, opening a new front in  its rivalry with Internet search leader Google Inc. GOOG.O
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Latest version of mobile phone browser adds social networking features, improves functionality.
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Just going into beta, Yahoo's new social network, Mash, beats the stuffing out of its predecessor, Yahoo 360.
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Internet giant Yahoo is to launch its new generation Internet portal for mobile phones in 12 countries on Friday, the company said.
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Blog: Yahoo Go for Mobile 2.0 features reduced loading time for Web pages and the ability to read more types of attachments and view traffic conditions.
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Yahoo Inc. has followed Google into the mobile-search arena, launching a service that allows wireless users to query its search engine over their handsets.
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Facebook took a new step into the mobile realm on Thursday, launching a platform for operators designed to make its social networking application work better on portable devices.
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Internet media company Yahoo Inc said on Tuesday it is adding media-playing features, large file transfers, new languages and other tools to its instant messaging service.
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Yahoo! is kicking the tires of a new social job-networking website.
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Internet media company Yahoo Inc said  on Tuesday it is adding media-playing features, large file  transfers, new languages and other tools to its instant  messaging service.