Yahoo!, which lags in the search and social networking space, will soon introduce new features in its search window and catch up on social networking using its acquisition of Tumblr, the microblogging site.
In order to cash in on the popularity of Tumblr among young Internet users, the company has announced that it will retain the brand of the microblogging site. A Twitter look-alike, the blogging site offers an elaborate dashboard, giving users more options to post content. It, however, is not so successful in India when compared with Facebook and Twitter.
Yahoo! has also upgraded its photo-sharing network Flickr by revamping the home page and offering one terabyte (1000 GB) of storage. There are about 25 lakh Flickr users in India.
Hari Vasudev, Vice-President and Head of Yahoo! India R&D, told
Replying to a question on Yahoo!’s strategy for social networking, he said Tumblr would help the company attract young phone users.
“We have just acquired the company. We are yet to make country-specific plans,” he said, when asked how it is going to popularise the social networking site in India.
Vasudev was here in connection with the two-day Yahoo! Hack India, which is being organised outside Bangalore for the first time.
“We are focussing on mobile Internet users. We estimate that about 30 crore people will access Internet over their mobile devices by 2015 as against 11.8 crore now globally. This, in turn, would spur the development of apps (applications), he said.