Yahoo!?

Category: Tech Today

Yahoo! recently popped up in the news recently due to its "success" in attracting web visitors in the U.S. Now, anyone who has been online for the last three years or works in the web industry knows that when it comes to tracking sites and visitors, numbers can be fudged pretty easily (and this has nothing to do with SEO).

At the risk of sounding like a superficial reader, I actually visit Yahoo!'s home page - but only when I'm thoroughly bored and want to read the latest garbage on celebrities/movies and nonsensical information about the U.S. job industry and jobhunting. Yahoo!'s editors over at the Yahoo Singapore page are also pretty good about culling world-shaking news such as Korean cosmetic surgeries, HK celebrity romances and gossip (they have a section devoted to K-Pop too).


Quick, use Yahoo!
Screenshot from Sherlock DVD (2011)

Yahoo!'s home page (regardless of country) and news section is occasionally the equivalent of a trashy tabloid or a less reputable digital version of UK's The Sun (though Yahoo! doesn't have a Page 3 girl). Unsurprisingly, the Yahoo SG articles have active readers who make snide and occasionally scathing comments about Asia and showbiz. Yahoo!'s US home page, on the other hand, runs some pretty head-scratching articles on dieting and odd videos that serve as excellent click bait for the bored housewife. The editors are definitely not aiming for BBC quality programming that's for sure. What makes their pages interesting (aside from the horoscope section), are the lively comments from readers. Let's just say that after reading news about Linux and the latest consumer electronics from sites such as Ars Technica, Phoronix, Engadget, and All Things Digital, the mudslinging, taunts and earnest opinions by Yahoo!'s exuberant readers can be extremely entertaining and provide a reflection of what type of users visit Yahoo!

It's actually nice to see Yahoo! is still around. That's not to say Yahoo! is relevant, useful or even fun. It's just good to see that one of the web sites from the old dotcom era is still breathing (albeit using a respiratory device named Marissa Mayer). Their e-mail service is terrible and they really don't provide any type of service that you can't get from Google or Microsoft. Other than triggering brief feelings of nostalgia for the 90s, Yahoo! is a curiosity for today's generation and a memory that refuses to go away for those who remember its heyday.