Yahoo! The 9

September 24th, 2006

A few posts back I mentioned checking out what Yahoo!’s been up to these days. I’m starting out with this internet-meme video service called The 9.

The 9 a pretty amusing idea, a daily video rundown of the nine hottest web links. A video host (cute blond girl: Maria Sansone) yaps about each site. The videos are presented in an energetic, quippy style somewhat similar to the video podcasts Rocketboom and Geek Brief: Cali Lewis, although a bit more similar to the evening news. The video is in Flash format, so it’s similar to YouTube in that is plays right away at reasonable quality without any QuickTime or Windows Media plug ins.

Links to the featured sites appear to the right of the video, so it’s pretty quick and easy to visit an interesting featured site. If the link is to a viral video, The 9’s video format is handy in that it shows a quick excerpt, possibly preventing wasted time.

All and all, although The 9 is a pretty decent idea with a professional polish missing in many video podcasts, it lacks something in the execution. My first instinct after checking out The 9 was to find the video podcast version so I could download it to my Video iPod. That’s where things start to go awry.

Basically, I don’t think a video podcast of The 9 exists, or if it does, I couldn’t find it. I fired up the iTunes Store and the Yahoo! home page, but it didn’t seem to be in either place. Maybe I’m wrong, but a video podcast for the iPod just seems like no brainer. Yahoo! 9 is a daily updated show targeted at an internet audience, so it seems like it would be a perfect fit. I think however, that Yahoo! really wants to use The 9 to drive traffic to Yahoo! maybe to view advertising.

Anyhow, The 9 idea is pretty decent, however since the content seems to be locked into the Yahoo! site I don’t know how often I’ll be checking it out. However this is a hurdle that could easily be overcome if Yahoo! wanted to. They do get points for catching on to popular links, daily content, Flash Video, and the podcast style. It’s just those last few inches to get the videos on the whole iPod bandwagon that I’m down on.

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