Business 2.0 has a splendid article here, looking at how Yahoo is learning from its acquisition of Flickr. One thing it has learnt is that tagging works. In fact it works so well it might become the weapon that Terry Semel uses in his epic battle with Google-Kong to see who can dislodge Microsoft first. The idea is that whilst Google's power-code can sift through the web's vastness, a Yahoo-mobilised army of people might do a better job. "The Flickrizers most ambitious goal is to turn Web searching itself into a social event -- the idea being that you can find what you're looking for faster if you first see pages saved and tagged by people you know and trust. Done well, it could play as the triumph of the humans over Google's cold mechanical approach."
Folks-on-Yahoo vs Google-Kong anyone?
I can't see anyone dislodging google for a while yet, tagging firmly remains with the geeks, I say so as someone who uses Flickr and del.icio.us regularly. Until tagging becomes anywhere near to mainstream (if it ever does) then it will be a long, hard battle for Yahoo!
Posted by: mspoke | November 22, 2005 at 01:55 PM