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Yahoo Japan Launches Social News Site, Braces Self

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Yahoo Japan has launched a socially driven news site called Minna No Topics or “Everyone’s Topics”. The site allows users to submit stories from around the web and then allows others to vote on the soties by clicking the plus button to add votes/points/score/value. The service is currently limited to Yahoo Japan users only.

Yahoo Japan is basically the Internet in Japan, ranging from broadband to cell phone to television services.

And taking that into consideration along with the fact that socially driven news seems to be the trend that the web is embracing, it makes sense for Yahoo it expand into the market and further strengthen their position. Furthermore, the fact that the site is in Japanese, might save it from vandalism from the Digg Mob.

Loren Baker has more observations on the site, including that he doesn’t see a story burying feature as seen on Digg.

Originally posted on March 17, 2007 @ 1:35 pm

The AOL-TradeDoubler deal is off

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As I predicted yesterday, the deal between AOL and affiliate network TradeDoubler fell through. AOL have not raised its bid, and withdrew the neglected one of course.

The TradeDoubler stock holders wanted more per share than the 215 SEK (just over $30) offered.

“We made a full and fair offer, and we always said we didn’t plan to raise it,” an AOL spokesman said. “Our Advertising.com business in Europe is growing rapidly, and this will not affect our plans to aggressively expand it.”

TradeDoubler is a big player European player in the affiliate market so AOL is in for quite a fight with Advertising.com, even though they are somewhat targeting different niches for now.

Originally posted on March 15, 2007 @ 2:05 am

Flickr to hit China

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FlickrYahoo is set to launch Flickr across China this year, starting with a version focusing on Hong Kong.

The new Web site will target Hong Kong users and will offer all the core features currently available on the English platform, spokeswoman Pauline Wong said, without elaborating.

While the traditional version of written Chinese is widely used in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the simplified version of the script is the standard in mainland China. However, most mainland Chinese are able to read traditional Chinese, and vice versa.

Flickr is of course already available (and uncensored) in China, but this will widen the reach of the site. According to the Reuters report, China will have around 10 million new users sharing photos online, and Yahoo wants to dominate that of course.

The details regarding how the localization is still a bit sketchy, but it sounds like they’ll just do translations for various regions in China. Which makes sense of course, the service is solid by itself.

Originally posted on March 16, 2007 @ 10:17 am

Video games aren’t just for kids anymore

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It’s a-me, Mario!Really? I’m baffled by that statement, it’s so retarded that I don’t know where to begin. Of course video games aren’t for just kids anymore, have you seen the games? Seriously. How can Reuters print this shit?

Anyway, Nielsen/NatRatings have conducted a study which states that 37% of the US adults venturing online own a video game console, and 16% own a portable gaming device. Out of these people, 71% are married and 66% have at least one child.

“As game consoles have become increasingly sophisticated, families have incorporated them into their centralized home media centers, which include the television, digital recording device, digital music player and the PC,” said Carolyn Creekmore, senior director of media analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings.

Good golly, they’re grownups playing games!

Originally posted on March 15, 2007 @ 2:22 am