Sunday, July 1, 2012

Dinosaur of Curation-Not Yet Extinct

The recent change of CEOs at Yahoo! (('m going to leave the ! off hereafter) seems to be reinvigorating that long-standing (and long-suffering) pioneer of social networking. Some like @ericjackson of Ironfire Capital believe that Yahoo is going to be made relevant again; I have my own reason for hoping this happens.

In the late 1990s, Yahoo Chat was very popular, bringing together people with the wonder of meeting anyone from anywhere in the world to chat about....well, it usually devolved into attempts to get laid and a large amount of trolling. Even so, in 1998 when I booted up my first personal desktop computer from Gateway, it was a wonder to talk with people in India, Germany, and all over the US.

Yahoo also provided what they called "Groups". These were (and remain) message boards with lots of useful tools to build virtual communities. Despite being a relic of Web 1.0, those Groups are still offered by Yahoo and many remain vibrant. I run one of them with a surprising large and active membership of over 4,900 with ~1,000 posts/month. One of the features of the Groups is that all messages, unless deleted by the posting member or moderator, are retained and are searchable. If I want to go back to June 24, 2005, and see the first few posts made to the Group they are easily found and accessed. This curation of messages has been a boon to the members and to me in my role of Moderator.

Sometime in 2011, one or two CEOs ago, Yahoo tried to convert the Groups to more of a Facebook/Timeline appearance. The angry villager rule was invoked and Yahoo quickly reverted the Groups back to the 'classic' Group appearance. Much as the smart phone, iPad, and Macbook each fill a specific niche despite some function overlap, there is a place in the social media/network biosphere for older forum-type applications like Yahoo Groups. It is my hope that this particular dinosaur continues to roam the Mesozoic savannah for many years to come.

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