Yahoo Shuts Down Chats, Gets Physical with StairCycle, and More
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Written By Reprise Media | June 24, 2005 | Share This
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Yahoo we can’t keep up with you lately. You’re palling around with a Virgin Airlines billionaire, fighting porn evil-doers, and still managing to make time to test out a new ad system. How do you do it?
For those of you who need a little update, here’s what’s up:
A man, a mustache, and millions of ads - A few months ago we told you about Yahoo and Sir Richard Branson’s “Think Big” contest, which promised to give away 10 million free ad impressions to one lucky business. That business has now been selected. World, meet Stair Cycle, an exercise device that promises the benefits of a stair-stepper and a traditional bike in one (juicer attachment costs extra).
OMG Teen Porn Chat C-U-L8R! - Two things that probably don’t go well together: ads for something that’s supposed to keep you and your kids safe (State Farm Auto Insurance) and something that’s pretty much guaranteed to do the opposite (chat rooms bearing names like “Girls 13 and Under for Older Guys”). Under increasing advertiser pressure, Yahoo will be shutting down all of its user-created chat rooms in an attempt to curtail their not-so-savory activities. The move comes less than a week after the LA Times pulled down their own experiment in citizen journalism, a “wikitorial” project that allowed users to edit and comment on stories. Can’t we give you kids anything nice?
Custom-made ads for crazy cat ladies - Adweek has the scoop on a new behaviorally-based content ad program Yahoo is testing out on select sites, including insane lonely people pet social networking sites Dogster.com and Catster.com. The system will leverage data collected by Revenue Science and could serve as a rival to Google’s AdSense network, which right now targets ads primarily based on page content.
Topics: Yahoo! |