Yahoo! Inc. launched several new mobile, tablet, and PC products today (Nov. 2) as part of the company’s philosophy of delivering the Internet to each of its users in a personalized digital experience.
Central among these offerings is Livestand, a free iPad magazine-style app that brings together content from Yahoo! as well as from more than 100 of its leading third-party publishers into an experience personalized to meet each user’s interests. Toyota and DreamWorks Pictures are Yahoo!’s official Livestand advertising partners at launch. Both use Yahoo!’s latest options and formats for advertisers, DreamWorks with an interactive campaign for Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, set to appear in theaters on Dec. 25, 2011.
Livestand uses Yahoo!’s own C.O.R.E. (content optimization relevance engine) personalization technology. Built with HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, it also depends on the company’s new Cocktails platform, including: Yahoo! Mojito, which automatically packages apps for multiple device formats; and Yahoo! Manhattan, which puts all of the rendering, processing and storage functions on the cloud.
Yahoo! also is making its free IntoNow television app available to iPad users. It identifies what people are watching, whether live or recorded; shows related content and personalized recommendations; and enables discussions with friends.
For Android users, there’s Yahoo! Weather, which presents the current weather conditions and related information with corresponding photos powered by the new Project Weather crowdsourcing effort to create a global weather image library using Flickr.
In enhanced Yahoo! Mail and new social features are also being implemented in this major product roll-out. It’s now possible to have small group conversations within Yahoo! News, and to set up notifications of updates that fit their interests. There’s also the Social Sentiment Slider, a news-driven social opinion poll that has implications for advertisers seeking to target specific audiences, as do most Yahoo! products.
“Hundreds of millions of people rely on Yahoo! every day, yet no two users are alike,” said Blake Irving, executive vice president and chief product officer at Yahoo!, speaking at a press event at the company’s Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters. “Today’s product launches reaffirm our commitment to personalize experiences across devices. By building these products on top of our powerful platforms with beautiful interactive design, we are getting closer to a truly ‘personal Web’ for every Yahoo! customer.”
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