I wanted to give the students an assignment that would use their apparel, design and consumer behavior knowledge to give suggestions to an web application that is not very well known among the college audience.
The millennial generation grew up on AIM and have moved on to Google. They use Gmail not Yahoo. They use Facebook and not Yahoo messenger to keep in touch with their friends and family.
While Yahoo may have a large market in Asian countries - it hasn't found a way to connect with the American teens at home. So, the assignment was for students to create their own avatar and write about their experience and what Yahoo can do to improve this service and make it more college student friendly.
The posts are on the blogs links on the right.
And here are my two bits on the avatars:
So I'm a very loyal Yahoo user (i bet if they check their demographic information - they'd notice that a lot of their users are from Gen X) and have had my avatar for a while. But like many of my students i agree:
Yahoo should tie up with Facebook and Myspace to let Yahoo users put up their avatars on the websites.
If Yahoo wants to appeal to the college going student - it needs to get cooler. They're not talking the language. And will lose out eventually to Facebook at the rate Facebook is adding new users.
Yahoo's avatars need more categories, there are too many backgrounds and you have to go through each one of them, remember your favorites and its just too much work. categorize them into school/ outdoors/ cities, etc.
And finally - I have short hair and i haven't found a single Yahoo avatar for women that allows me to be me! and so I'm stuck with choosing the male sex to truly show how i look.
4 comments:
Someone jokingly said to me the other day "maybe Yahoo should just shut down and invest the money in Google shares"..) I know, they have lost the web search game to google but I do think that yahoo is definately a second.
As for Facebook, the next generation is already on webkins and I guess will have more virtual friends than most people.
I totally agree with the whole hair and clothes idea, especially becuase people have different styles. And just like we were talking in class, a lot of poeple- such as men are becoming more metro- in fashion. I think it would be very helpful if Yahoo Avatar had more variety.
Also, i strongly agree with Yahoo Avatar teaming up with Facebook and Myspace. I think it would be such a cool idea if Facebook used Avatar for gifts. (One idea is that they should let you dress a dog with clothes, or pick the differ types of colors an items should have. Like when I want to give someone a balloon for their birthday- it would be really cool if i could put the person's name on it.... these a are just a little bit of cool ideas I think Yahoo Avatar could start. what do you think?)
Elizabeth :)
I definitely agree with you on limited Avatar solutions. I created an Avatar, yet it looks and dresses nothing like me. The Avatar’s could have been easily structured to have simple themes or personal options beyond the wet site. The Idea was cool, yet the construction of the Avatar’s were limited.
Regarding their form of advertisement, if they are planning to compete against Google or any other popular web sites today, they need to be more visionary. The members from Yahoo need to get on the creative and technologically advance train and start rolling. They are falling behind and will eventually be like hotmail (lost online). One thing they can do at this point is, partner up with Facebook, Myspace and up date their web site to be more technically advanced.
-GH
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