11.25.2006

Spread some peanut butter on this

Ok. I've been wanting to post on this topic for a couple days now and think I'm ready to sit down and write this post.

I first wrote about potential issues with the del.icio.us - Yahoo! mashup a while back.

Then I started thinking about some issues related to tagging.

And of course I recently read the Yahoo Peanut Butter Manifesto.

Now let's take a quick look at some evidence of overlap and poorly rationalized technologies in two specific areas that were mentioned in the memo that are near and dear to my heart, yet continue to co-exist as overlapping pieces of innovation within the Yahoo! empire.

Overlap #1: MyWeb2.0 vs. del.icio.us - WTF? I tried MyWeb2.0 when it first came out, but by then I had already been using del.icio.us. If you sit down and compare the features of WY2.0 vs. del.icio.us, you'll notice a couple things. Here's a quick feature comparison:

Edit Tags
* del.icio.us = YES
* mw2.0 = NO

Delete Tags
* del.icio.us = YES
* mw2.0 = YES

Rename Tags
* del.icio.us = YES
* mw2.0 = NO

Merge Tags
* del.icio.us = NO
* mw2.0 = NO

Detect Equivalent Tags
* del.icio.us = NO
* mw2.0 = NO

Support Compound Phrases
* del.icio.us = NO (workarounds in play)
* mw2.0 = YES

Bulk Tag Editing
* del.icio.us = NO
* mw2.0 = NO

Bulk Tag Deletion
* del.icio.us = NO
* mw2.0 = NO

Overlap #2: Yahoo Photos vs. Flickr. Again WTF? Can't we rationalize or collapse these services into a single offering. Which one are we supposed to use? Personally, I use Flickr over Yahoo! Photos, but again, why should I use one over the other? Both share some features in common, but there are some features in Flickr that Yahoo! Photos lacks, and vice versa. I've not used Yahoo! Photos enough to do a detailed feature comparison, as I have with the MyWeb2.0 vs. del.icious feature comparison, but I'm sure if you took the time to dig deeper, there will most likely be some degree of feature overlap as well as some degree of feature gaps between the two services.

Oh - I also forgot to mention that the tagging-related features in Flickr are also not quite the same as del.icio.us and MyWeb2.0, which is yet another layer of features to rationalize.

I want to make it clear that I'm not knocking any of these services, because quite frankly they all kick ass. My main point of contention and source of much frustration is the feature gaps that exist between services that are clones or closely complimentary to one another as I've outlined above.

After reading the Yahoo! memo, I welcome the changes within the walls of Yahoo! and look forward to seeing them give Google a run. They clearly have some AMAZING IP. Will be interesting to see how quickly they begin to morph into the company that Brad Garlinghouse alludes to in the memo.

Maybe in the back of my head, part of the reason why I'm focusing on yahoo and the recent release of the PB Manifesto is to drum up more support for, and attention to my desire to bring some of the basic concepts and techniques of traditional cataloging and classification to tagging and folksonomy, which are evident in the feature analysis and gaps between the tagging mechanisms built into del.icio.us vs. MyWeb2.0 vs. Flickr.

Do we need a standard for tagging? Dave Winer & friends - if you're paying attention to issues with socialsoftware, tagging, and folksonomy, which I think you are, please take a couple minutes to think about this.

With that I will conclude this post.

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