Yahoo Meme: Have You Found Your Internet Meme?

Yahoo! has recently launched their micro-blogging service, Meme. On first look, it may look like a Tumblr clone, but let me assure you it is a smart investment.

Also feature wise too, it isn’t a mere clone of tumblr or twitter , the latest internet sensation. Here is a quick comparison of three services:

Meme	Tumblr	Twitter
You can post text, link to an audio or video content.	You can post text, audio, video, quote, chat or a link	You can post only text and links to other types of media hosted elsewhere.
No character limit for posting content.	No character limit for posting content.	Message has to be at most of 140 characters.
You can repost others’ content. Origin is always credited.	You can reblog others’ content.	You can retweet others content. Crediting the origin is optional.
You can comment on content posted by others. You can also refer to friends by “/friendname”	You can “like” others content and comment on it.	Commenting not available. However you can reply to one’s tweet using @friendname.
You can listen to music inline and also watch embedded video without leaving the site.	Possible in tumblr too.	Not possible.
Offers site in multiple languages – Portuguese, Spanish and English	English only.	English only. Though you can post content in any language.

So what is unique in Yahoo! meme? How does it expect to beat competition? IMHO, it is relying on two key Yahoo! strengths:

1. meme’s amazing visual design, which makes you come back and post more content.

2. Yahoo! ’s huge network of 500 mn users.

Yahoo! started launching this website from Latin America, slowly bringing it to more and more users with new languages. It has a good chance to succeed if they capture the markets which are untouched by tumblr and specifically twitter. Then they can wage a full scale war against twitter. But this has confirmed one thing, the game is far from over. Watch out for more in coming months !

The war for becoming the largest social network on planet is still on.

Google, I Know what you want.

In the last post, I discussed a few statistics on browser market share. While it’s pretty obvious why Internet explorer rules (comes bundled with Microsoft Winows OS, which has ~ 90% of market share), rise of mozilla’s firefox must be appreciated. All of a sudden, Google, the traditional supporter of firefox, comes out with a browser! What’s cooking, Google? They don’t want to give you the right answer. Read on if you want to believe.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. They have used their leadership in search to realise their mission. Most of their products have been search centric. Do I need to remind you of the ‘omniBox’ feature bundled with their latest offering chrome?  Well, I believe their is much more than just search in their minds this time around.

Google already holds a significant market share in text advertising. But it’s not true in display advertising where Yahoo! is the undisputed king. Won’t Google love a bigger pie in the $10bn market? How do you get it if you don’t have enough infrastructure (data on browsing habits, which is the single most important thing to be able to target relevant ads to users).

Solution ! Come out with a browser. Promise to make the web better, and behind the scenes, add a clause in the ‘End user license agreement’ saying:

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. ”

Don’t smell a rat?  Okay! Read on to know why it’s significant. Another clause says:

“11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these action”

Other than that, they will store all the queries you make using their OmniBox, which includes:

i. search keywords.

ii. websites visited.

iii. IP Address.

Now combine all the three things and you get a wonderful data collection system to map individual users (recognised by the IP address) to their browsing habits which enables you to track user’s interest dynamically. Folks at Google are smart enough to build a system which can utilise this data to target display ads with 99.99% relevancy. 

If people notice the clause 11.1 and 11.4 in the EULA (99.99%, including me will not, till explicitely told and explained), tell them that you are working on EULA and youwill come out with a better version of EULA with a stable release.”  

TIP OF THE DAY: All Google products are always in public beta. 

Google, I wish, I could have a better business mind. Kudos !