In a move to grab a chunk of the
emerging mobile internet, Yahoo chose CeBIT in Germany to another a new service
called Oneplace. As the name is meant to imply, the objective is to make it dead
simple for mobile phone users to put all the content they wish to consume in one
place. Naturally expects to benefit from being the portal through which phone
users will access the web. The catch is that Oneplace isn't actually available
yet. The company reckons it should be ready to offer the service some time in Q2
2008. Yahoo has split the way it will display content via Oneplace into five
different 'views'. These are smart bookmarks; collections, categories, pulse and
favourites. Smart bookmarks makes sense since it will provide swift access to
popular forms of content delivery such as an RSS reader, a WAP site or a mobile
widget. Without access to even a beta version of the service, Mobile Software
Insight feels there isn't sufficient differentiation between the various
'views' for the average consumer to work out which content to put where. On the
Yahoo Oneplace web page, here, it's possible to see references to the German
train timetables in more than one view. Why? Yahoo is hoping that one place will
help to drive traffic to other web 2.0 sites such as its own Flickr and
de.licio.us along with other like Yelp. The company also took the opportunity to
announce that within the next two months, European users in France, Germany,
Italy, Spain and the UK will be access a number of Yahoo Mobile widgets
including one that points at Ebay. Gosh, that's original. It also says that a
European version of its all-in-one mobile application – Go 3.0 – should be with
European users before Q3 2008.It's a logical land grab for Yahoo to try to
conquer the mobile space, but the company needs to come up with some killer
attraction that will make consumers bother with Oneplace.
