Return of the Y! Vision Platform?
There has been rumors of late that Yahoo! will bring back the vision platform to add to their best in class financial portal renamed, TechTicker
Yahoo! FinanceVision was the first ITV platform, which launched back in 2000. I know something about it as my department lent equipment and personnel within the company to assist them.
Despite what has been written, the demise of Finance Vision was not due to its "supremely buggy technology" it was more a combination of factors; the companies internal direction, lack of broadband deployment outside of U.S. offices and almost no advertising for the program. For its day, it was a technological Mount Everest and set new standards for live programming five days a week, all within a customizable browser. See; Do You Remember Yahoo! Finance Vision
Mike McGuire, a media analyst with Gartner Inc., said he thought it would be difficult for TechTicker to distinguish itself. “If they can get an audience aggregated around the site, it can provide an off-ramp to other Yahoo properties,” Mr. McGuire said. “But we have a ton of stuff that’s available on TV and any number of blogs and Web sites that provide close to real-time accounts, so this will be a real challenge for Yahoo.”Brian Nelson a spokesperson for Yahoo said, “Yahoo Finance already maintains the Internet’s largest finance audience. When we think of developing new products, we’re focused on serving that audience.”
Read on for more about Yahoo! FianceVision, plus behind the scenes video clips
Can Yahoo! make a go of it the second time? I think they can, if they employ the following:
Make the viewer experience within the browser as customizable as possible
Use as much original content as possible, i.e. more in-depth News and Analysis, bring in heavy hitters with draw power
Make sure it works well on mobile platforms and in Podcast formats.
Don't skimp on the production values, this is not YouTube there are certain expectations.
Make it available as both live and on-demand viewing, archive all segments and employ good meta tagging
The first time around it was called an "experiment" by people inside the company, this time commit 100%
video © Gilbert B. Hammer
Y! Promotional segment, video © Yahoo!
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