The History of Yahoo! - How It All Started...

Yahoo! began as a student hobby and evolved into a global brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, find and access information and purchase things. The two founders of Yahoo!, David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, started their guide in a campus trailer in February 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet. Before long they were spending more time on their home-brewed lists of favorite links than on their doctoral dissertations. Eventually, Jerry and David's lists became too long and unwieldy, and they broke them out into categories. When the categories became too full, they developed subcategories ... and the core concept behind Yahoo! was born.

The Web site started out as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" but eventually received a new moniker with the help of a dictionary. The name Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." Yahoo! itself first resided on Yang's student workstation, "Akebono," while the software was lodged on Filo's computer, "Konishiki" - both named after legendary sumo wrestlers.

Jerry and David soon found they were not alone in wanting a single place to find useful Web sites. Before long, hundreds of people were accessing their guide from well beyond the Stanford trailer. Word spread from friends to what quickly became a significant, loyal audience throughout the closely-knit Internet community. Yahoo! celebrated its first million-hit day in the fall of 1994, translating to almost 100 thousand unique visitors.

Due to the torrent of traffic and enthusiastic reception Yahoo! was receiving, the founders knew they had a potential business on their hands. In March 1995, the pair incorporated the business and met with dozens of Silicon Valley venture capitalists. They eventually came across Sequoia Capital, the well-regarded firm whose most successful investments included Apple Computer, Atari, Oracle and Cisco Systems. They agreed to fund Yahoo! in April 1995 with an initial investment of nearly $2 million.

Realizing their new company had the potential to grow quickly, Jerry and David began to shop for a management team. They hired Tim Koogle, a veteran of Motorola and an alumnus of the Stanford engineering department, as chief executive officer and Jeffrey Mallett, founder of Novell's WordPerfect consumer division, as chief operating officer. They secured a second round of funding in Fall 1995 from investors Reuters Ltd. and Softbank. Yahoo! launched a highly-successful IPO in April 1996 with a total of 49 employees.

Today, Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet communications, commerce and media company that offers a comprehensive branded network of services to more than 345 million individuals each month worldwide. As the first online navigational guide to the Web, www.yahoo.com is the leading guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business user reach. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and reaches the largest audience worldwide. The company also provides online business and enterprise services designed to enhance the productivity and Web presence of Yahoo!'s clients. These services include Corporate Yahoo!, a popular customized enterprise portal solution; audio and video streaming; store hosting and management; and Web site tools and services. The company's global Web network includes 25 World properties. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo! has offices in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, Canada and the United States.

Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Search is history, says Yahoo!
The company says personalisation is now more important than search, in what some have seen as an admission that it can't compete with Google
Jonathan Richards


Yahoo!, one of the two names most synonymous with search on the internet, has surprised Silicon Valley by suggesting that the future of the web is not about search.

The comments, interpreted as an admission that Yahoo! cannot keep pace with Google, came during a conference at which many participants said that the traditional model for getting information from the internet – using a browser to visit web pages – was outdated.

Although Yahoo!, like Google, has talked before about developing a more personalised web, with relevant information delivered directly to readers, this was the first time that the company has said publicly that search will become less important.

"Search is no longer the dominant paradigm," Tapan Bhat, vice president of Front Doors, Yahoo!'s personalised home page, told the Next Web conference in Amsterdam.

"The future of the web is about personalisation. Where search was dominant, now the web is about 'me.' It's about weaving the web together in a way that is smart and personalised for the user," Mr Bhat said.

The remarks were seized upon as an acknowledgement that Yahoo!, which has been losing market share to Google despite the release of its rejuvenated search platform, Panama, earlier this year, could no longer keep pace with its rival and was beginning to shift its focus.

"They're basically admitting defeat,” Deborah Schultz, a Silicon Valley-based marketing consultant who gave one of the conference keynote speeches, said. “They've realised they can't compete with Google on search."

Jeff Clavier, a managing partner at the venture capital firm SoftTech, said: "The problem with Yahoo! is that they're trying to be all things to all people but they don't do any one thing particularly well."

Asked later to clarify his comments, Mr Bhat told Times Online: "We're not admitting defeat. Search still matters, but we need to be providing a wrapper around search to turn the info search offers up into something more useful."

A Yahoo! spokeswoman added that search remains a top priority for the company.

One of the most widely talked about keynote speeches at the conference was given by NetVibes, a company which has attracted more than ten million users to its service, which allows them to customise the information they receive from the web via small icons knows as 'widgets.'
Instead of visiting their favourite pages on a browser, NetVibes users organise a series of widgets that receive information from those pages, as and when it is updated, via a feed similar to RSS (really simple syndication).


NetVibes said it already had agreements in place with more than 100 major providers, inluding CBS, Time, and USA Today to 'widgetise' their content. Tariq Krim, its chief executive, said it would announce deals with 500 more companies this month.

"The widgets can be anything – your e-mail inbox, the favourite section of your chosen newspaper, a travel site that is constantly searching for cheap ticket on a route you have specified,” Mr Krim said.

“The point is to be able to update you on all essential things without you having to visit pages,” he added. "We like to call it a dashboard of your digital life."

Scott Rafer, the former chief executive, of MyBlogLog, which was bought by Yahoo! earlier this year for a reported $10 million, agreed that the focus of web companies was moving from search to personalisation.

"Google's founders made a lot of money essentially with an algorithm,” he said. “The next trick is people. The next web will be dominated by someone who does a great job with people manipulations.”

Mr Clavier said that web personalisation will become much more sophisticated. "I think the level of personalisation will reach a point of total freakiness,” he said. “Every personal detail – what content someone likes, the context they're in, their location, the time of day and their behaviour – will start to become relevant in the way the web is used."

Yahoo! Mail

Yahoo! Mail
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yahoo! Mail is a Web-based email (webmail) service from Yahoo!. It is the largest e-mail provider on the Internet, serving millions of users. Yahoo! Mail's major competitors include Hotmail, Gmail, and AIM Mail.
Yahoo! Mail Beta, a significantly different and advanced version, is currently under heavy development and is set to replace the current version of Yahoo! Mail when it is complete. It is currently in public beta. Development of what has now become Yahoo! Mail Beta started in July 2004, although it is possible other prototypes were in development before then. It is currently compatible with Internet Explorer 7 and Camino as well as Firefox (as part of Yahoo!'s plan to eventually upgrade all of their sites to be compatible with Firefox). Although usable under Opera and Safari there are slight visual problems regarding the layout.


History

The history of Yahoo! Mail began with JoJo Healy, Yahoo!'s resident investment banker since November 1996, who has dealt with every Yahoo! acquisition since it was created. "No one knows your business like your employees," he said. According to him, the main question was always to consider whether to "build, buy or rent." The answer really depended on the growth of competitors and the current position of the company. The main reason to buy things was to gain speed to market.

The growth in the number of Internet users eventually boosted the e-mail technology, but also created a very competitive environment where the winner was the first company to launch a successful e-mail service and attract potential users. E-mail became one of the most important features of a Web company as it would mean regular visits from e-mail users to the website.

When Hotmail and Mirabilis (the creator of the instant messenger ICQ) were looking to be bought, Yahoo! was the first company to which both made offers. Yahoo!, however, passed on both companies as they were too expensive for Yahoo! at that time. In the end, Microsoft ended up buying Hotmail for $400 million and AOL bought Mirabilis for $288 million.

Later there was also to be another battle to acquire the online communications company Four11. Yahoo! made a deal with the company for co-branded white pages. Gloria Gavin, who worked at Four11 as director of international business development said, "We always had a bias about being acquired by Yahoo! They were more entrepreneurial than Microsoft. We had a great cultural fit – it made a lot of sense." The real point in acquiring Four11 was that in March 1997, the company had launched Rocketmail, a webmail system that could be offered to users. In the end, Yahoo! concluded a deal with Four11 for $96 million. Yahoo! announced the acquisition on October 8, 1997, very close to the time that Yahoo! Mail was launched.Yahoo! Mail resulted from an acquisition rather than internal platform development because, as Healy said, "Hotmail was growing at thousands and thousands users per week. We did an analysis. For us to build, it would have taken four to six months, and by then, so many users would have taken an e-mail account. The speed of the market was critical."

The transition to Yahoo! Mail was not easy for many Rocketmail users at first. Yahoo! released various help pages to try and help these users. Soon after, on March 21, 2002, Yahoo! cut free software client access and introduced the $29.99 per year Mail Forwarding Service. Mary Osako, a Yahoo! Spokeswoman, told CNET, "For-pay services on Yahoo!, originally launched in February 1999, have experienced great acceptance from our base of active registered users, and we expect this adoption to continue to grow."

During the summer of 2002, the Yahoo! network was gradually redesigned. On July 2, Yahoo.com was redesigned and it was announced that other services like Yahoo! Mail would enter the same process. Along with this new design, new features were to be implemented, including new navigation tools, such as drop-down menus in DHTML and different category tabs, and a new user-customizable color scheme.

In November of the same year, Yahoo! launched another paid service: Yahoo! Mail Plus.Yahoo! Mail Plus offered a number of new features, including:

  • 2 gigabytes of e-mail storage
  • 20-megabyte message size limit
  • Ability to send up to 10 attachments per e-mail
  • POP Access and Forwarding
  • Archiving of e-mail messages to a hard drive for offline access
  • Ability to send messages from Yahoo! Mail using other e-mail domains
  • 200 blocked addresses and 50 filters to help screen unsolicited e-mails
  • No promotional taglines in messages
  • No account expiration
  • A choice of stationaries
"The launch of Yahoo! Mail Plus is part of Yahoo!'s strategic initiative to offer premium services that deliver innovative, reliable and relevant services to consumers," said Geoff Ralston, senior vice president, Yahoo! Network Services, and creator of the original Yahoo! Mail technology in 1997. "In just five years, Yahoo! Mail has grown from one million to tens of millions of users, illustrating how consumers have made e-mail an essential part of their daily lives. Through Yahoo! Mail Plus, Yahoo! continues to demonstrate leadership and innovation by offering consumers the industry's most complete and powerful e-mail solution."

On April 1, 2004, Google announced a free webmail with 1 gigabyte of storage. Though Gmail, Google's e-mail service, certainly offers a large amount of storage capacity, its invitation-only accounts kept the other webmail services at the forefront. Most of the major webmail providers like Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, and AOL followed Google's lead and increased their mailbox storage considerably. Yahoo! was the first provider to announce 100 MB of storage for basic accounts and 2 GB of storage for premium users. Hotmail followed suit, offering 250 MB, only 150 MB more than Yahoo! Mail, but still 750 MB beneath Google's initial whopping 1 GB. When signing up for a Hotmail account, users were initially only given 25 MB for the first 30 days, after which the account quota would rise to 250 MB. Determined not to lose customers, Yahoo! Mail then countered Hotmail and Google by increasing the storage quota of its free email accounts to 1 GB.
On July 9, 2004, Yahoo! acquired Oddpost, a strong webmail offering that simulated a desktop email client like Microsoft Outlook. Oddpost had new innovative features such as drag-and-drop support, right-click menus, RSS feeds, and a preview pane, but it also had incredible speed, using e-mail caching to shorten response time, and many of these features were incorporated into an updated Yahoo! Mail service.



Features

Starting in May 2007, Yahoo! started to roll out to its users, both Beta and non-Beta testers, an "unlimited" amount of email storage.
Yahoo! Mail has the following features:


  • Free version: Unlimited Mail Storage. 10 MB attachments, plus protection against spam and viruses. (See: DomainKeys) Advertising is displayed on the screen while working with the e-mail account. In some countries, users with free accounts can also read mail from a POP3 server (but not in the US). However, if they want to send mail from a distant SMTP server, they must upgrade to a Plus account. Accounts not logged into for four months get deactivated (The account can be retrieved but all personal data is lost). Every free Yahoo! account will be deleted after an inactivity of 4 months. Early in 2006, Yahoo! Mail introduced aliases to its repertoire of features. Users could now add a (single) alias username containing a dot character for a pre-existing account. The Chinese version of Yahoo! Mail offers 3.5 GB quota and 20 MB attachments
  • Business: Unlimited Mail Storage, 10 E-mail quota. Yahoo! Business E-mail is a combination of all their e-mail services with 10 distinct accounts each with the same features of the plus version and personalized domain name and e-mail address. Accounts can be managed by an administrator. There is $25 set-up fee and $9.99 monthly fee to use this service.
  • Additionally, a user can pay $35 per year to have up to five custom e-mail addresses and a domain name.
  • Yahoo mail underlines addresses and phone numbers in email and allows the user to add them to the address book.

Users can get around the Web browser access restriction by using software that simulates a POP server to which the e-mail application connects. FreePOPs is an example of a free software application that allows email clients access to webmail (including Yahoo! Mail) services through POP3.
In September 2006 it was announced Yahoo! Mail will be open source.



Spam policy

Like most free Webmail providers, Yahoo! Mail is often used by spammers to provide a "remove me" email address. More often than not, these addresses are used for the express purpose of verifying the recipient's address--thus opening the door for more spam. This has led many ISPs and individual users to block messages from Yahoo! Mail accounts.
However, Yahoo! does not tolerate this practice, and terminates accounts connected with spam-related activities without warning.



Filters

In 2002, in order to prevent abuse, Yahoo! Mail had filters that changed certain words (that could trigger unwanted Javascript events) and word fragments into other words. "Mocha" was changed to "espresso", "expression" became "statement", and perhaps most damaging, "eval" (short for "evaluation") became "review". The widespread unintended effects of this can be seen by using search engines to find such nonsensical terms as "prreviewent"(prevalent), "reviewuation"(evaluation) and "medireview"(medieval).
When asked about these changes, Yahoo! explained that the changed words were common terms used in Web scripting, and were blacklisted to prevent hackers from sending damaging commands via the program's HTML function.
As of Friday, June 8, 2007, the Yahoo! Mail filters no longer substitute certain words for others. Although the change may have occurred prior to this date, Yahoo! Mail now prepends an "_" (underscore) to certain suspicious words and word fragments.
Sending a test email from a non-Yahoo! Mail account to a Yahoo! Mail account with the words "Mocha", "eval", "Javascript," and "expression" in a sentence resulted in the Yahoo! Mail filters prepending an "_" (underscore) to those words, resulting in "_Mocha", "_eval", "_Javascript" and "_expression".
This prepending obviously removes the threat of the words acting as commands via the program's HTML function by rendering them as non-commands or unrecognizable commands.
As of June 9, 2006, only the terms "expression" and "javascript" were prepended with an underscore ("_").
There is also offered a spam filter called SpamGuard and an ability to set up custom filters. One problem that can be encountered is that the spam filter is applied before any custom filters you create. This results in some emails which you may wish to have directed to your Inbox or some other folder to be sent to your Bulk folder instead. The only way to deal with this bug is to constantly monitor your Bulk folder, this most often affects email from unusual domains but this author has had email from a Yahoo email account being sent through a Yahoo Group mailing list get filtered to Bulk as well.



Mail certification

In February 2006, Yahoo! also announced their decision (along with AOL) to give some organizations the option to "certify" mail, by paying up to one cent for each outgoing message, allowing the mail in question to bypass Yahoo's and AOL's inbound spam filters.


Greylisting

Incoming mail to Yahoo! addresses can be subjected to deferred delivery as part of Yahoo!s incoming spam controls. This can delay delivery of mail sent to Yahoo! addresses without the sender or recipients being aware of it. The deferral is typically of short duration, but may extend to several hours. Yahoo! does not specifically document this policy in detail, although some information is available


Yahoo! Mail user name bans

On February 20, 2006, it was revealed that Yahoo! Mail was banning the word "Allah" in e-mail user names, both separate and as part of a user name such as linda.callahan. Shortly after the news of the "Allah" ban became widespread in media, it was lifted on February 23, 2006. Along with this action, Yahoo! also made the following statement:

We continuously evaluate abuse patterns in registration usernames to help prevent spam, fraud and other inappropriate behavior. A small number of people registered for IDs using specific terms with the sole purpose of promoting hate, and then used those IDs to post content that was harmful or threatening to others, thus violating Yahoo!'s Terms of Service.

'Allah' was one word being used for these purposes, with instances tied to defamatory language. We took steps to help protect our users by prohibiting use of the term in Yahoo! usernames. We recently re-evaluated the term 'Allah' and users can now register for IDs with this word because it is no longer a significant target for abuse. We regularly evaluate this type of activity and will continue to make adjustments to our registration process to help foster a positive customer experience.


Yahoo! Mail Beta

In September 2005 Yahoo! began beta testing a significantly enhanced version of their e-mail service, based on Ajax scripting acquired from Oddpost, along with new philosophical approaches to email, including the Oddpost design philosophy (which Google made heavy use of in Gmail):

As Mail Beta is based on Oddpost, it features the same underlying code base, including the implementation of this design concept to minimize the amount of data sent during an email session by creating a JavaScript UI engine on the client side and sending "Datapacks" instead of reloading the whole interface on every click like a traditional webmail service (e.g. traditional Yahoo! Mail). This makes the service much faster than its counterparts.

However, unlike Oddpost, Yahoo! Mail Beta runs on a variety of OS' and browsers, and runs perfectly under Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox. It does not work with the MacOS X default browser, Safari, however it does run in Safari under Windows.

The look and feel of the new version is designed to mimic a desktop e-mail client, and it offers unlimited storage space, tabbed emails, RSS feeds, drag-and-drop capabilities, advanced keyboard shortcuts, advanced search, integration with Yahoo! Calendar and Messenger, Domain Keys, address auto-complete and more.

Yahoo Mail Beta also has a mascot called Liam, who is basically a little boy, who is shown in the "Help" panel as well as in the loading screen.

The Mail Beta team also plans on integrating Yahoo! Messenger with Mail Beta.
Wide-scale beta release of the new version was introduced in late 2006 , and as of September 2006, active users who sign up get the new Yahoo! Mail Beta immediately.
It is unclear when Mail Beta will leave Beta stage, as there are certain features (e.g. Yahoo! Calendar, Notepad etc.) that are still missing from the application, as well as features that are wholly original to Mail Beta (e.g. Yahoo! Messenger integration). Mail Beta also lacks anything other than the most rudimentary search function, leaving it a long way behind many other webmail clients.


Public and critical reaction to the new product has been positive , although a number of users have encountered speed issues, which can render the client very difficult to use - especially on older hardware. Each update to the Beta has included significant speed improvements, and the Mail Beta team is still focused on improving speed issues.

In March 2007, Yahoo! integrated the Yahoo! Messenger instant-messaging service into the Yahoo! Mail Beta interface.

Yahoo! Messenger



Yahoo! Messenger
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Y!M” redirects here. For the movie database, see Yahoo! Movies, for the mail service, see Yahoo! Mail.

Yahoo! Messenger is a popular advertisement-supported instant messaging client and protocol provided by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Messenger is provided free of charge and can be downloaded and used with a generic "Yahoo! ID" which also allows access to other Yahoo! services, such as Yahoo! Mail, where users can be automatically notified when they receive new email. Yahoo! offers PC to PC telephone, file transfers, webcam hosting, text messaging service, and chat rooms in various categories.

In addition to instant messaging features similar to those offered by ICQ, it also offers (on Microsoft Windows) features such as: IMVironments (customizing the look of Instant Message windows), address-book integration and Custom Status Messages. It was also the first major IM client to feature BUZZing and music-status. Another recently added feature is customized avatars.

Yahoo! Messenger 2.5.3 for Mac, released in 2003, is the current stable version for Mac OS X. It has far fewer features than the current Windows release and has been reported to be quite buggy. In June of 2006 Messenger for Mac 3.0b1 was released as a beta, and remains in beta more than a year later. This beta has a more modern interface than 2.5.3 and includes avatars,display image viewing, BUZZ facility, and some other features comparable to those on the Windows version. However, it is still lacking the more advanced features contained in the Windows version, such as PC-to-PC calling, photo sharing, an address book and chat room access. The latest beta version (rc4 released in May 2007) also contains bugs, including a java bug when Safari 3 is installed that causes new messages to pop to the top of the window causing the user to repeatedly scroll to the bottom of the window as new messages arrive.

Yahoo! has announced a partnership with Microsoft to join their instant messaging networks. This would make Yahoo! Messenger compatible with Microsoft's .NET Messenger Service. It also made Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger compatible with Yahoo!'s Network. This change has taken effect as of July 13, 2006, - Yahoo! Messenger has integrated instant messaging with Windows Live Messenger users, and is fully functional.

British Telecommunications' BT Communicator software is based on Yahoo! Messenger. BT Communicator was withdrawn on 31st December 2006.
Yahoo! Messenger was originally launched under the name Yahoo! Pager on March 9, 1998.


Features

Yahoo! Voice
Yahoo! Voice is a Voice over IP PC-PC, PC-Phone and Phone-to-PC service , provided by Yahoo! via its Yahoo! Messenger instant messaging application.

Voicemail and file sharing
Yahoo! added voicemail and file sending capabilities to their client. File-sharing of sizes up to 1GB was added.

Plug-ins
As of 8.0, Yahoo! Messenger has added the ability for users to create plug-ins (via the use of the freely available Yahoo! Messenger Plug-in SDK), which are then hosted and showcased on the Yahoo! Plug-in gallery

Yahoo! Mail integration
On July 2, 2007, Yahoo! plans to integrate Yahoo! Mail Beta and Yahoo! Messenger. Conversations will eventually be archived and stored in the same manner as emails. This allows users to search within their chat logs easily, and to have them centrally stored no matter what computer is used to have conversations.


URI scheme
Yahoo! Messenger's installation process automatically installs an extra URI scheme ("protocol") handler into some web browsers, so that URIs beginning "ymsgr:" can open a new Yahoo! Messenger window with specified parameters. This is similar in function to the mailto: URI scheme, which creates a new e-mail message using the system's default mail program. For instance, a web page might include a link like the following in its HTML source to open a window for sending a message to the YIM user notarealuser.


Send Message

To specify a message body, the m parameter is used, so that the link location might look like this:

ymsgr:sendim?notarealuser&m=This+is+my+message


Offline Messaging
Offline messaging, a feature long offered by Yahoo!, allows online users to send messages to their contacts, even if said contacts are not signed in at the time. The sender's offline contacts will receive these messages when they next go online.



Interoperability with Windows Live Messenger
On October 13, 2005, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced plans to introduce interoperability between their two messengers, creating the second largest instant messenger userbase worldwide: 40 percent of all users (AIM currently holds 56 percent). The announcement comes after years of 3rd party interoperability success (most notably, Trillian, Pidgin) and criticisms that the major instant messengers were locking their networks. Microsoft has also had talks with AOL in an attempt to introduce further interoperability, but so far, AOL seems unwilling to participate.

Interoperability between Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger was launched July 12, 2006. This allows, for Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger users to chat to each other without the need to create an account on the other service, provided both contacts use the latest versions of the clients. For now, it's impossible to talk using the voice service among both messengers.



Games
There are various games and applications available that can be accessed via the conversation window by clicking the games icon and challenging your current contact



yahoomessenger.exe (previously ypager.exe)
yahoomessenger.exe is the main process belonging to the Yahoo! Instant Messenger application, an Internet messaging program. The name of the Yahoo! instance messaging client changed from ypager.exe to yahoomessenger.exe since version 7.5.0 beta.
Note that this applies to the Windows version of Yahoo! Messenger.



Upcoming releases

Yahoo! will soon unveil a completely rehauled version for Windows Vista to a generally enthusiastic response. It has been designed to exploit the new design elements of Vista's Windows Presentation Foundation.
Macintosh client 3.0 Beta 2 will reportedly have more features, including Voice. However, Yahoo! have yet to announce a release date for this beta.

Yahoo! Mobile

Yahoo! Mobile
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yahoo! Mobile is a mobile website operated by Yahoo! worldwide to promote its Yahoo! Go and mobile web products.

External links

Yahoo! Movies

Yahoo! Movies
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yahoo! Movies, provided by the Yahoo! network, is home to a large collection of information on movies, past and new releases, trailers and clips, box office information, and showtimes and movie theater information. Yahoo! Movies also includes red carpet photos, actor galleries, and production stills. Users can read critic's reviews, write and read other user reviews, get personalized movie recommendations, purchase movie tickets online, and create and view other user's lists of their favorite movies.


Special coverage

Yahoo! Movies devotes special coverage to the Academy Awards with a special Oscars site. The Oscars site includes articles, show coverage, a list of the night's big winners, photos, videos, polls, and a blog, written by J. Keith van Straaten.
Yahoo! Movies also releases special guides, such as the Summer Movie Guide, which contains information on the major releases of the summer with exclusive trailers and clips, photos, box office information, polls, and unique editorial content.
Additionally, Yahoo! Movies is teaming up with MTV to host a special site for the MTV Movie Awards, which will feature show information and a section where users can submit original movie shorts parodying last year's movies for the chance to win the new award, Best Movie Spoof.

Yahoo! Music

Yahoo! Music
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yahoo! Music, provided by the Yahoo! network, is a provider of a variety of music services, including Internet radio, music videos, news, artist information, and original programming.
Previously referred to simply as "LAUNCH" (and rebranded "Yahoo! Music" or simply "Y! Music" in February 2005), it began as a magazine by the same title that was issued in both standard print format and as an interactive CD-ROM. Eventually the print version was eliminated and subscribers were only sent the CD-ROM version. It contained video interviews, live performances and special video segments by music stars as well as standard (but interactive) music magazine features. Eventually the company, LAUNCH Media, offered music videos over the Internet and started LAUNCHcast Internet radio in 1999. LAUNCH was purchased by Yahoo! for US$12 million in 2001 and integrated into their website. The website also features artist profiles with extensive selections of music and biographical information.
Yahoo! Music was the #1 online music site in terms or audience reach and total time spent as of March 2007.



New version

A banner has recently started appearing on the UK region for Y! Music asking users to fill in a survey to help them create the next version of Y! Music. The banner shows a small screenshot of the new version showing a new white/purple colour scheme instead of the current different shades of purple. It is also a sign of the possible launch of a UK music store to compete with iTunes and Napster.


Products
  • LAUNCHcast and LAUNCHcast Plus Internet radio
  • Yahoo! Music Jukebox
  • Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription streaming and download service
  • Music videos
  • Live Sets - Exclusive video concerts from A-list artists
  • Who's Next - Listeners vote on emerging artists
  • Pepsi Smash on Yahoo! Music - Exclusive video interviews, performances, and reality segments
  • Artist profiles
  • Lyrics
  • Official Grammy Awards coverage

Key dates

In 2001, Yahoo! purchased LAUNCH Media, makers of the LAUNCHcast Internet radio service.
On September 14, 2004, Yahoo! purchased Musicmatch, Inc., makers of the Musicmatch Jukebox software. As of Musicmatch 10.1, Yahoo! has rebranded Musicmatch Jukebox as Y! Music Musicmatch Jukebox, and integrated it with the Yahoo! Music Engine store. The main difference is the branding and physical program.
In 2005, Yahoo! Music became the first major online music service to provide a $5 per month unlimited download service similar to the Open Music Model, albeit with digital rights management, called Yahoo! Music Unlimited.



Notes and references

Comscore Media Metrix Accessed May 2, 2007.