Bix: Another Piece In The Puzzle?
Bix, a social contests site, is being shuffled into the social "mix" at Yahoo, as Bradley Horowitz explains:
[from Bix joins Yahoo!’s social media mix - Yodel Anecdotal]So how does Bix fit into Yahoo!’s strategy? Bix, which was founded in January, is a young startup — not unlike Flickr, del.icio.us, Upcoming.org, and Jumpcut when we acquired them. All represented emerging social media trends with great potential. Imagine where Bix’s creativity could go once we scale it to over half a billion people worldwide. For example, we’re currently looking into possible synergies with things like Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Video and our entertainment properties.
In the meantime, we’re psyched to welcome Bix founder Mike Speiser and his coworkers to the Yahoo! family. Once the deal closes, Mike, one of the founders of Epinions, will join the Communities, Communications, and Front Doors group as our new vice president of community, driving products like Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! 360�, Yahoo! Photos, and, of course, Bix.
On one hand, Yahoo seems to be moving at a fairly cautious pace, integrating the various parts of its social "mix" -- why are Yahoo Bookmarks and del.icio.us not integrated, for example -- but they are rolling in real talent at the moment, and the mash-up culture mindset seems to be really booming there.
It's sort of odd to see Miguel Helft say thsi:
[from Yahoo Buys Site for Staging Online Contests]The deal is an attempt by Yahoo to bolster its offerings in social media, an area where it has struggled to compete with sites like MySpace and YouTube.
A gross overgeneralization, since YouTube is a video sharing site (now owned by Google), and MySpace is a social networking app (now owned by Fox Interactive).
I keep hoping that Yahoo would create some sort of common infrastructure under all these common social apps -- a platform at a higher level than a Yahoo login ID. A common, multi faceted digital identity, involving reputation, status indicators, rich presence, etc.
That would be a good way to compete against the other giants, and would leverage the myriad social apps that Yahoo has acquired or built.
Comments