Like Stewart Alsop, I love Yahoo and use My Yahoo as a start-up page. By far this is the ultimate customized newspaper and much more, despite some interesting new alternatives for infohounds, such as RSS-based news readers and sites that combine conventional journalism and blogging. Just the same, Alsop rightly worries that “as Yahoo looks for new ways to grow, it is in danger of losing its core value as a service.” Thanks to all the advertising, his home page takes much longer to download, for example.
Point is, Yahoo’s a commercial service whose first loyalty is understandably to its shareholders. And the needs of commerce and those of the public are not always the same. If Yahoo keeps moving in its present direction, then we’ll have more need than ever for organizations such as the Internet Public Library and the Librarians’ Index to the Internet. One can even see them moving toward more timely, Yahoo-style links. After all, if commercial sites can offer reguarly updated links to free news-areas, why not librarians–who could then link to less ephemeral items in their links collections and even to relevant books in the public domain. Ideally, too, along the way, librarians and their vendors could learn from sites such as Amazon.com, whose catalogue puts MARC records to shame in ease of use.
If nothing else, Yahoo shows the need for a TeleRead approach with an emphasis on usefulness to society, not just the commercial needs of the moment. Far from pre-empting the Yahoos–or local libraries, for that matter–TeleRead could open up a new demand for commercial and noncommercial sites to guide people to the right information. Consider the recent example I offered of Your personal library home page, TeleRead style.
And remember, too, TeleRead isn’t just about links. It’s also about financing good content in an era when books are not quite as profitable as they used to be.
