YAHOO Redesigns - what are you doing?

“This is probably the most fundamental revisiting of the Yahoo home page since the beginning of Yahoo,” Tapan Bhat, senior vice president of integrated consumer experiences at the company, said in an interview. “What Yahoo is is a place where millions of people come, and we want to make sure this becomes the center of their lives online.”

SHOOT: You really want to make your online presence resource rich. A one-stop-shop for news, banking, social networking, email, etc. People prefer to go to one place to find what they want [the mall mentality] rather than having to trek across time and waste energy. Online is similar, though not entirely the same. There are munchers, snackers and browsers. Content is what separates one pasture from another, but the walls/filters are also important.

How can you be distinctive without filtering out too much? How can you be interesting without diluting your content with everything else out there? Simple - make sure some of your content is hyperlocal. That online editing function - discerning what works - is vital. And finally form and participate in your communities.

clipped from www.bloomberg.com July 21 (Bloomberg) -- Yahoo! Inc., trying to add users and advertisers, will today introduce the first redesign of its home page since 2006. A test version of the page will debut in the U.S. and spread to France, India and the U.K. in the next week, Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo said. The site aims to make it easier to access content from across the Web, including social- networking services, news and shopping. A section called My Favorites lets users add small boxes that have direct links to specifics sites, such as Twitter Inc., Facebook Inc. and BBC News. When the cursor hovers over one of the boxes, a larger graphic will open, giving updates from that site. The boxes will have space for ads, bringing a new opportunity for Yahoo to generate revenue. The page will have a space for a “deal of the day,” letting advertisers feature a certain product. The final version of the page will be available in the fall, said Kryssa Guntrum, a spokeswoman for Yahoo.