Yahoo! Shine…. already shining with user-created blog posts
April 2nd, 2008Wow. Yahoo! launched their new women’s property, Shine yesterday. I have to say, while I’m not the right gender for their target audience, I really like what they’ve done.
Here’s what stands out for me: integrated email and user blogs. (Click the graphic for a larger image. I’ve outlined the key features)
* Love the integrated email inbox. This way, regular Shine visitors can check their Y mail right from the front-page of the site.
* User-created blogs and blog posts! There is already a ton of activity on the blogs, and with comments from fellow visitors.
Now… I am pretty sure that this would be the first Yahoo! property to launch user-created blogs. Which means the Media group, and their new Lifestyles section, continues to blaze some trails in UGC on the major portals. (Y Health was the first to launch expert blogs, back when I was product manager and working with two awesome teams — the Health team and the Expert Blogging team).
The new blogs are powered by the social media system that my next team developed and it brings a huge smile to my face to see these blogs come to life on the new property. Just a few weeks ago it was Y Buzz (also phugc-powered) and now Y Shine. Nice.
If you think that type of user-created content is cool, then check out my new startup Thingfo, and our next-generation community platform. Thingfo enables contextual user-content creation based on the activities of a site’s visitors, and links our customer sites to the social web and their user’s existing social networks. Integrating a successful site with the social web is going to be critical going forward, and Thingfo is here to help.
In the meantime, it’s great to see the continued rollout of some great user-created content from the platforms I worked on at Yahoo!, from the new Y! Buzz to the Shine Blogs. Shine on.