The new Yahoo homepage is truly Web 2.0… or Web 3.0, I can’t keep track of which version we are now on.  My initial reaction is that Yahoo has done a good job of achieving what their obvious goals were:

  • Keep users on Yahoo pages by embedding content from other sites into the Yahoo homepage as ‘apps’
  • Monetize page views of other sites’ content in those apps
It is the second part that has me scratching my head.  Facebook has their own ads, and their own monetization.  Why would Facebook support an app for the Yahoo homepage if the ads served are Yahoo’s own?  Isn’t it true that if Yahoo didn’t have this app, and a user wanted to check their Facebook account, they would then have to visit Facebook.com and therefore be subject to Facebook’s own advertising?  Sure.  So, why is Facebook onboard with this?

And, perhaps the biggest elephant in the room, why doesn’t Twitter have an app?  Even GMAIL has an app available (although, it pulls in ‘new’ mail, so obviously Google has realized that by making the Yahoo app barely functional, they do not suffer much (if at all) in terms of their own pageviews).

Maybe that’s the answer.  Maybe I just don’t understand all the wonderful things people are doing on Facebook aside from reading their friends’ status updates.  All the wonderful things… yeah, that must be why Facebook allows this (drat, there’s my sarcasm again).

Yahoo\'s new facebook application

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