Yahoo to take on Twitter “Its Yahoo Meme”
After closing the social network platform SpotM, Yahoo has launched Meme, in English, to take on microblogging site Twitter. The company had launched this service in Spanish and Portuguese languages earlier this month.
Meme is currently in an invite-only mode, similar to few microblogging services like Tumblr, Twitter, Pownce and others. After creating the account, users get a blank blog for micro-sharing text, images, music, videos or mash up of all these things.
Core Feature: Repost
Meme uses the same one-way follow system as Twitter, and items from users you follow will appear in your stream, mixed in with your own items. Interestingly, users can also comment on links and stories from users they do not follow, but Yahoo Meme puts an interesting twist on the commenting system, though. One of the central features of Meme is the ability to ‘repost’ (in Twitter parlance, this would be a retweet). The repost button (and not a comment button) appears next to every post, photo, video, or MP3 file. In order to comment on a story, you have to repost the story to your own feed.
It also offers the facility to add new friends by searching the internet, which is quite similar to Tumblr and Twitter.
The company’s previous efforts to capitalize on the social networking domain kept failing in spite of repeated attempts. The recently launched ‘Know Your Mojo’ also failed along with the Indian social network, SpotM, which was closed down less than a year after its launch.
Meme does not allow much in terms of customization. The users cannot customize the themes with background images and custom CSS to style the text, as this facility is available with Twitter and Tumblr. Both these services have a rich faux-cabulary, which defines how a person uses the service. Meme does not lend on a particular vocabulary. The setting panel has minimal options like Meme title, 100 character description, avatar/photo and notifications. It also shows the comments posted by the users recently.
Yahoo Meme can have a big advantage over Twitter in terms of reliability. Twitter’s image has suffered for frequent service outages, with its “Fail Whale” graphic appearing whenever the site is overloaded, emerging as the company’s unofficial logo.
Several technology sites like TechCrunch and paidContent are not pleased with Yahoo’s move, they said, “Meme seems to lack in its features and in potential to surpass its competitors.” They also pointed out that the company has a spotty record with Mash and SpotM.
