Sniffing Glue, Monkeys that search and other yahoo-isms

Yahoo’s product development efforts of late are starting to make some noise. Rightfully so. IMedia and TechCrunch recently covered these “bright light” topics. Yahoo’s “buzz” button is now being deployed on various sites around the web, including People.com, SI and WSJ’s “AllThingsD“. This digg competitor is a traffic driver for third party content sites as the button enables content provider’s stories to surface on Yahoo’s front page if readers/people “buzz it”. A powerful funnel to drive content to yahoo’s front door.

Yahoo is also making a splash with their project Glue and SearchMonkey. In beta format and currently only launched abroad, “Yahoo Glue, which is only available on the company’s India portal, combines pictures, text and videos into a single search result page.”

This evolution to a semantic web experience allows users to customize search results and how they are displayed. I saw the schemas for both Glue and Search Monkey last time I was at Yahoo’s south bay campus and was quite excited at the direction they were taking.

While there is alot of noise and distraction on Yahoo’s executive floor, with discussion around corporate structure, strategy with the bankers, consultants and lawyers hammering away over terms for a combined entity, etc – the product managers in the trenches are thinking big thoughts and unleashing innovation that Yahoo historically was known for.

I await further developments and am excited for the product teams at Yahoo. May they launch quickly!