Round of Applause: Yahoo! Messenger
Rating: Yeah! Baby
In order to understand mobile, it’s often necessary to go back to basics and understand the source. Hence, as Yahoo! Go continues its assault of the mobile space in order to connect lives… I met up with Isabelle Wies, Senior Product Manager of Yahoo! for Mail and Messaging, at Yahoo!’s offices in London yesterday.
The tour around Yahoo! messaging was an eye-opener and a joy. It’s easy for mobile application developers and service providers to think “inside of the box” and a revisit of instant messenger on the PC was a vivid awakening.
In short, the Internet Yahoo! messenger experience is “hot” – no, it’s even better than hot it’s on fire. The experience is what is necessary to fuel the success of mobile services. But it’s clear that mobile is a long way behind the fixed experience – not because of style of service but due to the restrictions of the mobile device and the quality of the network.
Isabelle took me through a new range of plug-in services and features including free voice calls. One feature did something many have tried to do but failed… I was speechless.
Yahoo!’s music search services are, in short, excellent. For the past 12 months I have seen mobile service white label offers, from companies such as Infospace and Medio Systems, all of which have been good. But the music search from Yahoo! Messenger on the Internet was superior.
Of course this is also a no-brainer as the Internet came first and the mobile Internet is still in its infancy. New services are delivering but need to find their feet in mobile.
However, it’s a great place for any application developer on mobile to start, review and get back to the drawing board. It really is all about music, recommendation and discovery, and Yahoo! Messenger has it…
Editors Note: over the next few weeks I will be meeting some key executives at Yahoo! in the mobile, search and connected live space. Podcasts of all the thought leaders will appear on Hot Buttons, and analysis of Yahoo!’s convergence from the Internet to Mobile is also penned in the editorial calendar.
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- mInfo and Xiaoi deliver natural language mobile search to Chinese instant messenger users
- 3 UK signs Yahoo! as portal advertising partner and we ponder on the CPC, CPM and CPA
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