the blog: tag= yanswers
More than bleeding purple
- Entry
- http://valleywag.com/5017424/stewart-butterfields-bizarre-resign....
Click it, read it. It's Stewart Butterfield's—Flickr co-founder—good-bye resignation note. Simply unreal and hilarious. I wish I had the cajones.
It's an appropriate metaphor for Y!'s 2005 ascent to its current cluster-mumbo-jumbo. It's rather sad because in early '05, Y! began to hire big guns, major frackin' talent. Flickr had just been gobbled up. Soon, upcoming.org del.icio.us and Jumpcut joined the ranks, and with 'em, some extraordinary peeps. Internally, the Y!UI library, YDN network sprouted wings both as critical platforms for Y! properties and external entities in the wide open web. Yahoo! Answers busted its nut in late '05 too, growing to 20 million unique users in 6 months and over a dozen languages. Hack day, Y! Teachers and Y! Photos shone brightly. Man, those were good times. We were all doing some good companywide.
But .... 2007 reared its ugly head and somewhere, somehow the egos and bureaucracy ate into that spirit. Panama's flop and a deteriorating stock price didn't help.
Y!'s bookmarking services is a prime example of "does anyone have a clue?" There's del.icio.us, Bookmarks, and MyWeb, all of which do similar things, but no one has a clue how to offer a complete service. And some of these were supposed to help Search results in the losing battle against the Big G!. Again, never happened. Most of the resources were allocated towards dinky and trivial features, including color changes / reskinnings—except for the del.icio.us Firefox and IE extensions which rose to awesomeness. Overall, if there's one product that persevered the hogwash, Flickr did it best. Best example? Its well-thought out approach to video; otherwise corporate would have probably demanded Youtube on Flickr. Ha!
It's really sad to see the top dawgs go, beginning early this year: Bradley, Ian, Zawodny, Leonard, Caterina, Stewart and many others. (Yes, I'm name-dropping) They're not just any ol' rank-n-files. They were the ones that made you work hard and feel proud at Yahoo!.
*sigh* Too bad.
At least, Joshua still bleeds purple ;) But for how much longer?Labels: bureaucracy, del.icio.us, flickr, jumpcut, upcoming, yahoo, yanswers, ybookmarks
- 0 +add yours
Ask. Answer. Repeat.
- Entry
I just noticed that Askville has an almost identical feature as Y! Answers. I don't remember if this is new, but it's remarkably similar.
It's the search / ask ahead widget that I worked on.
Also to note is that the plumbing is fairly similar as well. the XHR request fires after two (2) words. The response is markup in the form of an unordered list. However, there is no caching of the result set within the client, so for each keyup event fired (with aforementioned requirements), the XHR is sent; just a performance thing.
Also, Udi wrote about Askville, over a year ago, when it launched. Copying then, and copying now: http://breasy.com/blog/2006/11/18/lameville/Labels: yanswers
- 0 +add yours
In the shadows of ....
- Entry
- - http://blog.hikkup.com/?p=8
M' boss, Bart, showed this to me today. It's my Facebook application (look closely for my name) alongside / above the featured F8 app.
I'm famous! No, I know, not really, if not, not at all. - 1 +add yours
Cheers!
- Entry
It's Bart! It's Wally! I found the photo while perusing the all-new Y! Search for images tagged 'yanswers'.
We're takin' a breather after releasing Y! Answers GA (General Audience, not Beta) two summers ago. Man, I so fat.
Photo taken by Nick.Labels: yanswers
- 0 +add yours
Answers domination!
- Entry
Read/Write has a roundup of the most popular Q&A websites.
"Who's Asking? A Roundup of Q&A Sites"
Notice the number of times other sites are compared to the grandiose Yahoo! Answers: "Amazon's Yahoo! Answers clone, similar to ...., It's like ...., a near direct clone of ...., Microsoft's Y! Answers clone, Y! Answers clone from Lycos", etc.
Total domination. All your base are belong to the Yamster. Ha ha ha. Happy Friday!Labels: yanswers
- 0 +add yours
Siamese Answers
- Entry
The Answers team just released Yahoo! Answers in Thai. Don't ask me what it says, I can barely recite the alphabet =)
- http://th.answers.yahoo.com- 1 +add yours
Answers of Arabia
- Entry
- http://whatstheplot.com/blog/2007/05/14/a....
I wonder if the Answers codebase, specifically the CSS, can handle the right-to-left layout w/out much tinkering. Inquiring minds want to know .... http://www.d1g.com/qna
The first Answers copycat had been http://knowledge.livedoor.com. It's changed a little bit since its launch which incorporated the same alien-blood green design as well as an indentical Q/A user experience. It did, however, allowed users to tag their content.
Of course, there's Microsoft's Live QnA which also injected the Answers green into their visual design. It's gone now, much like the hype around it.
Lycos UK also delivered a QnA site, http://iq.lycos.co.uk. The feature that I recalled that looked the same had been it's search-ahead, type-ahead widget when asking a question. It seems to be gone now; I reckon it's been yanked due to being a performance hog as it throttles search constantly. That's my guess.
And, of course, there's Linkedin's Answers service.
Am I missing any?Labels: qna, socialsearch, yanswers
- 0 +add yours
The Answers Network
- Entry
A few hours ago, the team released the latest incarnation of Answers. The release includes a beta program for adding contacts / building relationships; one can then view all his / her contacts' questions and answers. Also, there is a 'Top Contributor' label for extraordinary Answerers. So far, the response is mixed; it always happens =)
This is my last sprint (project) w/ Answers. It's kinda sad. Answers has been a gift and one of my greatest personal achievements. It's just time, as 5 other engineers have left or also leaving. These things happen, as products and project teams grow, outlasting the original cast.
So, add some friends / contacts / peeps to your Answers Network now!Labels: bureaucracy, yanswers
- 2 +add yours
Bringin' it home.
- Entry
Last night, I attended the Y! Superstar awards show with my beloved Answers team. A bit fancy for my tastes as the formal gear is required; I'm not comfortable in a suit.
I drank a lot. A lot. I started right away, attempting to quell my anxiety (lots of ppl, lots of big shots all around). I had a pleasant buzz going into dinner. Big. Happy. Grin.
It was smooth sailing until the waiter insistently refilled my wine glass every 20 minutes. Poor me, as I gulped down glass after glass. I really hope I didn't embarrass myself too much =)
Joining the fun from abroad, Jan, a hard-working Brazillian, who just moved to the States this past weekend, and Gina, an engineer who has been working in Taiwan while caring for her sick mom. It was great to see 'em; they were part of the core Answers team that was herded in August '05.
Anyways, some photos here:
- http://www.flickr.com/groups/yanswers06/pool/Labels: yanswers
- 0 +add yours