Yahoo: from darling to pariah

At the start of 2005, Wired magazine enthusiastically featured Yahoo [ The Ungoogle (Yes, Yahoo!) 13.03], the forgotten internet powerhouse. Most people think Yahoo is just a big index of the internet but it’s other services, such as YahooGroups (which is used to run the Cybersociology list), email, and the new Yahoo 360 have helped Yahoo to achieve some impressive numbers: 165 million registered users, 345 million unique visitors a month.

All seemed to be going swimmingly for Yahoo but then the tide turned.

Soon after purchasing flickr and moving the Canadian team that developed it to California, Yahoo started asking Flickr users to “join” their memberships. Some of those who didn’t have Yahoo memberships, and didn’t want them, protested at the move and set up a group called FlickOff. Some users remembered that in 1995 Yahoo bought GeoCities (user homepage building site) and quickly changed the terms and conditions of the site to say they owned all the content that had been added by users.

Today Reporters Without Borders claims that Yahoo supplied information to Chinese authorities that helped lead to the conviction and ten year jail sentence received by Chinese journalist Shi Tao (also reported by BBC News)

So what’s up with Yahoo? Nothing really. Obvioiulsy, it’s a large company protecting it’s commercial interests. By linking Yahoo and Flickr memberships they’ll have more information on user movements and habits, and can cross promote the services more affectively. There may also be back end improvements as well that mean it costs Yahoo less to administer one user database instead of two. In China, Yahoo is trying to tip-toe around Chinese officialdom and, in some instances, this is bound to mean co-operating with policies of censorship. Most companies trying to break into the large internet market that China is becoming are bound to find themselves being forced to make difficult choices. I’m not saying it’s excusable, just that I understand.

When you build a business based on pushing community building tools out to users, as Yahoo has done, you take a big risk in that you’re bound to be criticised at some point for doing things those users don’t agree with.

That’s one of the problems with the increasing complexity of software – most communities simply don’t have the skills (Linux or whatever) to develop their own community platforms so have to use services such as YahooGroups. And, when they do so, someone’s bound to get hurt.

One Comment

  1. Reporters Without Borders

    Robin Hamman points Smartmobs readers to Cybersoc and refers to an item on BBC News about Yahoo been accused of supplying information to China which led to the jailing of a journalist for “divulging state secrets”….

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