Since Yahoo! has launched their Yahoo|Current platform, I think it time to revisit my article about Yahoo! FinanceVision and an image of their UI, which I recently came across.

Back in 2000, Yahoo! created the first and most innovative IPTV platform of the day. It featured two reporters in New York City, Bertha Coombs at the NASDAQ and Mary Snow at the NYSE, in addition to a studio in California where content was fed in real-time and then back out to the Internet. I had the pleasure of working with them on many projects during my tenure at the company.

Yahoo! FinanceVision, circa 2000

- Content channels (upper left, shows were also available for on-demand viewing)
- Player window (streamed as MW or Real)
- URL pushed links window (upper right that were specific to the topic or guest)
- User customized pane (lower left, stocks, weather, etc....)
- Search Window (lower right, for content viewing on any site)
- In addition, the player window was adjustable to view only the video stream, or some or all of the other panes.

What made the platform unique were features like polling, the ability to receive questions from the audience during a live interview, as well as pre-roll spots. A person called a Data Wrangler pushed out URL's during an interview. The 30-person group did not survive nor did the platform, which is a shame. The Vision platform was ahead of its time, and of course, there was a general lack of broadband deployment at the consumer level, which was an impediment to adoption.

So, flash forward to 2006 and the Yahoo|Current platform.

Yahoo|Current, circa 2006

What strikes me and other people who worked with it, is how little has progressed since 2000 specific to user interactivity. So, what is going to separate the Y|C platform from other YouTube/me too sites? The answer, I think, is in creating a platform where there is relevance for communities. I was talking with a friend recently who put it simply. "Yahoo! groups are a core asset of the company" yet he did not understand why they do not leverage that community to build content channels! Examples abound, a special interest group for instance can share content and mash it up. And that would make it a better targeted group for adverts....

As Frank Chindamo, of Fun Little Movies said in a recent interview I had with him, how many times do you want to see a cat falling off a chair, and what is the revenue model?