It was great to see Yahoo! launch their new version of the home page in beta last week in the UK. Here at miggle, we work closely for Yahoo! on their ‘Front doors’ day in day out, so clearly we’ve got a vested interest in saying the page is great. But that’s really what we think.

During my time at Yahoo! homepage launches were a big part of my life – this is the fourth one I’ve been involved with in one way or another and so I’ve seen first hand how it’s changed and the reasoning behind the changes.

A brief historical functional overview of the Yahoo! homepage, which up until at least the start of 2009 was the single most visited web page on the planet, goes something like this – and in many ways mirrors the history of the web:

• At the start, it was all about links in the directory, which dominated the page
• Then the directory became searchable
• Rather than drive traffic to competitors, Yahoo! started building and acquiring its own products like Yahoo! Mail and Finance
• Yahoo! started publishing latest news on its homepage
• With so many people on the site daily, the media value of the page soared. Yahoo! led the way in offering advertisers truly unique opportunities on its homepages worldwide
• As the web broadened, Google Search became ‘the killer app’ – portals no longer could offer the same standard as the pure plays, for example, everyone knows eBay – but do you remember Yahoo! Auctions?
• Entry points to the web changed. The Hotmail homepage was a more valuable destination than the MSN homepage, because more people started their web sessions there. Internet toolbars became so important that companies like Microsoft started to embed search functionality into the chrome of the browsers and desktop.
• Thus, a page like yahoo.co.uk had to have value as a product in its own right. Editorial engagement became more important as homepages became the place to find out about what cool stuff was happening on and offline. The directory disappeared.
• Web2.0 and social networking took off. The web became a more customisable place. Mobile phones became more important as a platform. The personal assistant on the last version of the Y! homepage showed where front page evolution was heading.

And now, in 2009, we have a Yahoo! homepage that allows users to see the news headlines from the Guardian alongside its own news product. A page that actively encourages users to add their favourite sites to the left hand nav bar rather than big up its own portal offering. Yahoo! has recognised that setting your online status is a key part of any user’s identity when going for a surf on a highly personalisable web – even though its as easy to update your Facebook account from the Y! page as it is your own Y! profile.

Is this simply Yahoo! admitting defeat? I don’t think so. I think this is a good strategic move on their part, allowing users to create their own ‘starting point’ on the web. If Yahoo! ever had a raison d’etre, wasn’t this always it? Is the new homepage evolution or revolution? Let us know what you think.

The new home page still does everything that Yahoo! has always done well – pointing users to fresh and interesting content and brilliant products such as Y! Finance and Mail – but also recognises the fact that the Internet has moved on from the dominance of portals. That in itself gives every web publisher the opportunity to think about how it can leverage Yahoo!’s audience to drive engagement in its own products. If you want to think about how that could work for your business then drop us a line.

Based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

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Tags: advertising strategies, miggle media, website development

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 11:55 am and is filed under editorial, migglemedia, migglepublishing, website development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.