I like the new Yahoo home page and enjoyed Read/WriteWeb's podcast about it. But Ravi (ex-Yahoo) makes a good point I had not considered:
"This homepage dropped the concept of website directory completely. I guess the transformation is complete. Yahoo! is now more about showing people in and around yahoo! network and not about showing people what’s most useful on the web. Yahoo! is the new AOL of the web…"
The new design looks a lot better then the old one, but there is a major flaw with it. If you are using 800 by 600 resolution the design will not fit unless you select “narrow layout”. They should have made it so that if your resolution is 800 by 600 it gives you the narrow layout and if it is higher it gives you the wide layout.
i disagree with ravi calling yahoo the new AOL of the web because it removed the directory. isn;t more of an admission that web search is the way that people discover new sites. search is the new directory.
toni and kent,
My point was not about directory being important, but about being a walled garden. for ostensible business reasons yahoo is interested promoting yahoo! network and keeping users on yahoo. My point was that the new homepage illustrates this point. Removing the directory is symbolic.
AOL had interest in keeping people locked up on it’s network. Yahoo is interested in “driving” traffic to their websites. I called yahoo the new AOL of the web because competitively yahoo is interested in keeping people on it’s network. It’s a tough balancing act for yahoo to choose between sending user to the best site vs sending user to a yahoo! site