Scott Gatz’s Blog

It’s been a busy day for social media at Yahoo! Following on the heels of our RSS research we’re launching three four cool new things on Yahoo! today.

• Yahoo! Podcasts (Y! Next Release) - this early test release starts off with a podcast directory (with tags and ratings/reviews) and a search engine to help you find all the podcasts out there and subscribe using iTunes or YME. The backend of this is integrated with the RSS database at Yahoo, so if your podcast isn’t there, be sure to add it to My Yahoo and ping blo.gs to let them know when there’s an update to your feed. There’s more exciting stuff coming from this team, so be sure to keep an eye out.
• Blog results on News Search beta - do a search on Yahoo! News search and you’ll see that results from the blogosphere appear on the left side. It’s still beta and it looks like there’s a bit of improving to be done, but my search on Supreme Court Nominee Miers returned some perfect blog results on the right. Again, this is hooked into the RSS database at Yahoo!, so add your feed to MyY! and be sure to ping blo.gs to let them know when you’ve updated.
• Themes on 360 - As a more advanced user I love the idea of tweaking CSS and getting my blog just right, but for everyone else, 360 just launched Themes to make it easy to pick from a bunch of themes (kinda like you can do on My Y!).
• Also, 360 launched a “blog this” toolbar button on Y! toolbar. I haven’t tried it yet, but I really like the WP bookmarklet I use on this blog, so I’m assuming that’ll be all good too.

Congrats to all 3 teams and I look forward to seeing how these products evolve and get even better over time.