If Yahoo were a person, it would be a mid forties, dwelling in a midwestern city of 500,000 or so, Starbucks drinking, Gap™ or Talbot's™ shoppping, trend watching fellow/gal – picking and chosing a carefully manicured appearance that is neither outlandish or fashionable but abjectly neutral and banal.
Church on Sunday's, only cursing when they stub their toe, with 2.5 kids (literally, 1 kid has been sawed in half just to make the statistic apply) with 3 bedrooms and 2.5 baths, working a 9 to 5 and overflowing with aquaintances. But deep down identitless, aimless and living one day after another without being anything but lukewarm.
Yahoo doesn't seem to be able to decide if its a "search engine", a news site, or a portal for everything imaginable. The icon system is varied, too complex (for their relative size). The images are inconsistent in size and scale, as are the text sizes. The hierarchy feels somewhat muddled and overly bland (using AJAX as a gimmick, more than an helpful tool).
And what don't I like about the site? The header. Again, a header that seems a thrown on after thought (though, I can't say that I have much room to talk) ... it seems like the idea was to hit every corner of the header and leave the "middle" for the logo and search; but the outcome makes ones eyes feel trapped. Yahoo doesn't so much hate you, as it does feel that you (the "average" user) isn't sophisticated enough to find what you need without blinking arrows, shiny buttons and a glut of information.
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Comments (18)
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I'm hoping for dailies from you.
by Luke
10/15/2008/ (09:10)
You ask much my friend. If I can somehow find a way to turn this into a profitable venture, then more examples will find their way into the interwebsnet.
by Paul
10/15/2008/ (09:10)
This is actually a pretty interesting site. Keep it up, I'll be back to check your next post.
by Joe
10/15/2008/ (01:10)
You can probably make quick work of the Google front page. Ha!
by John
10/15/2008/ (09:10)
Very good idea! I'm down for the ride.
by Josh of Cubicle Ninjas
10/15/2008/ (10:10)
Excellent! I love the critiques and the 'less is more' mentality of your own site. If you could, as you said, make some money from this idea, you would truly have no end of websites to choose as examples....
by Anne
10/16/2008/ (12:10)
Haha, I hate seeing people use yahoo for anything. Your Summary is so true. Maybe if they had less text and not so many busy pictures I wouldn't get such bad A.D.D. looking for the search bar.
Every year they seem to throw on more content to the homepage.
by Tom
10/16/2008/ (12:10)
Such a great *why I didn't think about it before ?* idea!
Hope your futur examples will alternate between designs you like and designs you don't.
It would also be interesting to deconstruct a "before/after" redesign.
by Guillaume Tirard
10/16/2008/ (07:10)
Guillaume:
I am going to do sites that I like; but it is interesting how sites appear after you strip them of their meanings and just show them for what they contain. I'm a big "grid" guy. I have lots a ideas, I just need to the time (between this and my "real" job).
I will be adding a comparison - side by side of the original site and the reconstructed. All in due time.
by Paul
10/16/2008/ (07:10)
Great idea!
I'll bet there will be a Firefox-AddOn soon, that does this automatically. ;-) Or can the WebDeveloper Extension do this already?... hm.
by John
10/17/2008/ (06:10)
Bravo!
It might be too much for one person to take on what is obviously going to be a great new resource for communications designers!
Would you be open to wireframe site submissions + analyses? I am sure there would be a legion of contributors to this.
by idnapper
10/18/2008/ (08:10)
Not only is this concept delightful, the execution is witty and fun. I hope that you can work your way up to weekly entries.
After reading the other comments on this thread, I have to throw in my support for a psycho-analysis of Google.
by Rachel
10/19/2008/ (05:10)
Well, the thing is.. Yahoo (yet another hierarchical officious oracle!) its neither... it was supposed to be a guide to surf the web.. but with the big web boom and all what happened they overgrew too much, with no path to follow. They are struggleing to capture everyones attention by putting too much information in the screen "maybe something will hit the user and make an extra click".
What they need is to stop trying to be a search engine and do news... they have quite good writers and you can find anything there.. although it aint that reliable...
have fun !
by Tura
10/22/2008/ (10:10)
>>Tura. That's a good observation. Too often companies attempt to be too much to too many, effectively being great at nothing and indistinguishable from the competition. I agree, they're news (though, often its AP/Reuters reports) is a good resource, sports, entertainment, etc. But then they become another CNN, msnbc, news network. Either way I believe they need to strategically refocus and redirect.
by Paul
10/22/2008/ (12:10)
>>Paul
Then we aren't really talking about how does Yahoo sucks.. the Question would be if Yahoo can be saved ?
I personally think the brand is too well stablished to change it... although what they're doing isn't the best they have to continue with it. It's like if mac donalds stopped selling the small cheese burgers it's what they do, although everyone knows quarter pounders are the best ones.
If they re-focus what would they do ? Now days everyone knows how to "surf the web" so creating a guides to suf the web would be useless.
News site ? pfft, stealing visitors from CNN / MSNBC would be out of the line.
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What they need to do is re-organize their site...
You dont have to create the wheel all over again, so make a clean accessible opener (ripoff googles index, hehe) with user centered accounts that the could control what the page shows... No body is interested in everything, so if the focus more on the users they could catch up their attention. And offer great usefull content to everyone.
Well that's what i would do.
by Tura
10/23/2008/ (10:10)
Hello! Recently has read in news that re-testing
of Large Hadron Collider will be conducted :(
Me it is terrible :(
by NibWhonohah
10/31/2008/ (06:10)
@NibWhonohah : what? what are you even talking about?
by Paul Armstrong
11/11/2008/ (06:11)
Massive LOL! Congratulations, I think you've made the statement of the year! ... for Info Overload, for the war of CSS and all that went before... for "How much does any of this REALLY mean?" Yep, the Internet has changed history forever. I love reading between the lines... er... where ARE the lines? lol. Great stuff. I've bookmarked you and will keep tabs.
p.s. As for generating an income off of this great idea. Hey, most of us have had a zillion of great ideas, and how much income are we generating? lol.
by Leanne Boyd
12/05/2008/ (03:12)
I apologize, but the overwhelming amount of comment spam forced me to turn comments off for "Yahoo.com"