Yesterday at the CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas, Yahoo! announced the availability of Yahoo! Mobile supporting over 300 devices, and provided a sneak peek at Yahoo! Messenger for the iPhone.
Yahoo! Mobile comes in two basic flavors, an application (available for iPhone, Windows Mobile and a few others) and a web-based mobile version for everyone else. They share a similar look, and do a pretty amazing job of integrating services from a wide range of popular choices. News, email (including Gmail), instant messaging, social networks — they are all available.
In related news… Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone
Announced yesterday–but not yet available for download–was Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone. This is somewhat curious, as Yahoo! Mobile (including the iPhone version) and Yahoo! oneConnect (which is also available for the iPhone) already support Yahoo! Messenger. So with this “new” product, you now have three ways from Yahoo! to connect to Yahoo! Messenger. And that's not even considering all the third-party options (Nimbuzz, Beejive, Palringo, etc.).
Granted, Yahoo! Messenger for the iPhone is more full-featured, but the multiple products still leaves me wondering if they have a cohesive plan for all these products. Check out the video demo:
http://vimeo.com/3951867
Useful Links and Other Opinions
- Yahoo! Mobile – official site
- Sneak peek: Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone – Yahoo! Messenger Blog
- Yahoo! Mobile for Web Launches Across More Than 300 Devices Around the World – Press Release
- Yahoo Gets It Right: New Mobile Website, iPhone App Launch – Search Engine Land
- Yahoo Takes Mobile, Messenger to iPhone – PC World
- Yahoo Rolls Out iPhone App at CTIA Wireless – eWeek
I played around with Yahoo Mobile a bit and one of the things that’s actually very cool is the “interests” tab. It’s kinda like Google Reader or Netvibes, but easier. No knowledge of what the hell an RSS feed is required. My mom could use it.
On the flip side, power users will probably prefer more powerful tools, rather than Yahoo and Google’s swiss army knife approach.