Yahoo’s My Web offers both personal and social search features, but until now you’ve had to go through Yahoo 360 to invite others to share information. Later tonight, Yahoo will be dropping that requirement, allowing you to add anyone as a contact if they have saved public information in their My Web accounts.
“This is a launch to simplify the addition of contacts,” said Tim Mayer, Director of Product Management Yahoo! Search. “It’s about lowering the barriers to entry to mainstream users so they can experience social search.”
The idea is to allow people to quickly build up contacts that have saved and tagged useful information without having to make explicit, personal contact with them.
Yahoo will also be introducing a new feature called “contact labels” that allow you to create small groups and only share material with people within those groups—for example, friends, family, co-workers and so on. The feature is similar to one offered in Yahoo’s photo-sharing service, Flickr. Labeling your contacts in theory increases the amount of control you have over what is shared with whom.
Yahoo has begun the process of rolling out the changes to My Web 2.0, and the new features should be fully enabled by midnight pacific time tonight.
Related reading
5 most interesting search marketing news stories of the week
Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from the world of search marketing and beyond.
The 4 scariest online marketing disasters and how to avoid them
As marketers, CEOs and managers we deal with too many fears daily: We have too many disasters to avoid. Let this article serve as a checklist to help you avoid some of the most unfortunate and embarrassing online marketing disasters.
Should Google be more transparent with its updates?
Most of Google's algorithm updates nowadays are unconfirmed and unannounced, leaving website owners and SEOs guessing as to what caused a change in ranking and what they can do to fix it. Does Google owe it to its users to be more transparent?
How well do you know Search Engine Watch? The SEW Friday quiz
Following the success of our previous Easter trivia quiz, we decided to mix it up again this Friday with another quiz - this time testing how well you've been paying attention to the content we've been publishing on Search Engine Watch this week.
