Yahoo plans Groups improvements
Yahoo Groups will get many new features in the next year, including product reviews, address books, event planners.
- Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
Update 12:41 p.m. PDT: I corrected a reference that should have been to Yahoo.
Yahoo has begun sharing some future plans it has for Groups, its service where people with shared interests can get together online through mailing lists, calendars, polls, and other features.
In the "coming year," Yahoo plans to add many attributes that expand the scope of groups, according to the Yahoo Groups blog on Tuesday. Those features include tools for product reviews, service directories, wanted boards, address books, and event planners.
And upgrades to existing features include: a better system for hosting photos that permits more storage and larger pictures; better message boards; the ability to store e-mail attachments; and the ability to set the site for non-English languages.
There's no official word about whether there will be room for some of the sharing and collaboration that's coming with Yahoo Open Strategy on Groups, but it seems possible to me. For example, hosting OpenSocial widgets that are available to members of the group seems a natural fit.
Yahoo already has launched a Groups Lab, a team that creates new features such as the recently released People Map beta test that shows group members' locations on a map.