I originally wanted to post this yesterday but Blogger was on the blink.
One of the key products I was involved in whilst at Yahoo! was the company's entrance into the social search space with a product called MyWeb. In the last year or so the company has updated the product to version 2.5, which is immensely usable and purchased del.icio.us.
MyWeb was useful as a 'memory' with its repository of saved web pages, however in versions one and two was a pig to set up. Many users didn't appreciate its utility because it was so hard to initially use.
Last night the company rolled out Yahoo! Bookmarks. Bookmarks is a mix of old and new. The brand name does what is says on the tin and takes the bookmarks function that was on the old My Yahoo! page since 1999 and brings it right up to date. It gets consumers over a major barrier about what the hell the product is.
The interface on the product is slicker than a silk codpiece, with proper drag and drop functionality like the Oddpost-powered Yahoo! Mail. The site thumbnails is one of those so simple its obvious ideas. Big props to Tom Chi - the developer who did much of the super-sharp work.
So that Bookmarks must live, MyWeb must die, there will be a migration path to either del.icio.us or Bookmarks. Migration will be easy because Bookmarks sits on the MyWeb platform and del.icio.us will move over (whilst still retaining a user experience that makes a Benedictine monks cell look decadent).
To be honest with you I want both, part of the value of MyWeb is the discovery of great links from other people who are known to you, AND the ability to take a copy of a page that you've seen.
The reason that I want to copy a page is that many links, particularly on dynamic content sites like newspapers die, having a cache of the page at the time I originally saw it is a really handy reference.
Anyway, give it a try here. A Yahoo! ID is required.
