Rob Williams - Orangejack

Last week I told you that Yahoo! was launching a newly updated desktop ticker. Someone commented that they'd like to hear more about why I've been a big fan of Yahoo! for so many years. I'll try to explain here.

We all know the story of how Yahoo! was one of the first kids on the internet block in trying to index the web into a more understandable, more obtainable way. I for one enjoyed their service early on.

Later they gave us the ability to customize Yahoo! in the way I want it and I made it my start page many years ago. They offered the ability to use little modules from different news sources, let me track the weather I want to track, sports teams, and even some free email! My.Yahoo.com was great!

But within the last couple of years, I've realized they offer so much more. They also have a great subdomain naming system that's easy to remember. Want to play games? Go to games.yahoo.com. Interested in health issues? Go to health.yahoo.com. Need a definition? Go to definition.yahoo.com. Want to listen to music? Go to music.yahoo.com (which is launch.yahoo.com).

A friend of mine decided to travel the world for a year. I had a thought then that I wish I would have pursued more. What if they contacted Yahoo! and asked if they would pay for some of the traveling if the traveler would use all Yahoo! services? What a great marketing idea! If only Yahoo! offered blogging (which they don't now, but maybe soon?) it would be perfect. Think about it:

• While traveling you can interact with people through groups.yahoo.com, messanger.yahoo.com, and mail.yahoo.com
• You can post photos of your trip at photos.yahoo.com, store documents you might need online at briefcase.yahoo.com, bookmark your favorite links at bookmarks.yahoo.com and keep your calendar updated with your plans at calendar.yahoo.com.
• You can keep up with your finances at finance.yahoo.com, pay your bills at billpay.yahoo.com, book all your travel plans with travel.yahoo.com and get directions at maps.yahoo.com
  
• You can keep up with news, sports, and weather back home and internationally at news.yahoo.com, sports.yahoo.com, and weather.yahoo.com

There are so many other things you could do but that's just the highlights. I know there are other networks out there like all Google offers, but I've just liked Yahoo! I don't use all of the Yahoo! stuff, but I use a lot of it...and I use Google and other services for other things too. But Yahoo! is almost the total package.

And Yahoo! has made it easy to find their stuff. They have a toolbar for your browser at toolbar.yahoo.com, a new desktop ticker, and a personalized homepage at my.yaoo.com. You can follow what they are up to at next.yahoo.com and research.yahoo.com.

Then late September Yahoo! revamped their my.yahoo.com which is all RSS based. So now I can get blogs, other news, weather, sports, everything I find important onto one page.

Yahoo! seems to want to do more than just offer the standard email, search, and directory approach. They seem to want to create a web environment that is easy to use for communities to sprawl, for people to connect and stay informed. I like that...and they've done a great job offering it to me over the years. I'm still a fan.

Oh yeah, and Yahoo! ranks this blog #1 for my name! Goggle doesn't.