Ninos Youkhana

Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, talked about the future of internet technology and search in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum.  She talked about the new technology that yahoo is going to implement in the next 3 to 5 years. It is called the “Interest Graph. Putting it in her words,” We think about how do we take the Internet and order it for you”. She also said, “In the future you become the query.”

In short, Yahoo is going to organize the Web for me using the Interest Graph .

I started to imagine myself living in a magic land with Aladdin and the Geni. However, this time I am Aladdin holding the magic lamp and Yahoo is the Jinni.  So now, Yahoo the Geni and is basically saying, “Abracadabra, you’re wish is my command.”

After all these years of collecting data on me, they will feed me back information that matters to me. This will happen according to Ms. Mayer in the next 3-5 years. Advances in the User Interface (UI) and the User Experience (UX) will push it to the next level.

But I am cautious, because what I see is a window dressing (new UI/UX) of the old pre-set preferences form by check boxes or Google alerts on steroids. I think we should be careful riding this new wave of UI/UX touches, popping bubbles, and swapping screens that may lead to derail focus from fundamentals and being cool becomes the new business model.  A teenager spends all his/her money on looking good.

I urge the startup people to be careful from the excitement of new technology in building something “Very Cool”, but the fundamentals are “Very Weak”. I see this happening with all these new startup companies I receive the beta invites for. I can’t believe until now, they are making Travel websites and travel Apps. Let me say this, I don’t care what your website and app will do or how will show me, I will not leave my Expedia unless you give me free ticket. I don’t care about features and coolness.

Just words of thought of my opinion!