Remember Yahoo Meme? It’s a microblogging site from Yahoo that appears to be the company’s attempt at a Twitter clone. Instead of birds however, its theme is dogs.
The site was has been available in Portuguese and Spanish, but now it is available in English. Well, “available” is a strong word. You can go to the site and read what it says in English, but it’s not available for actual use at this point.
You can give them your email address in the “I want in” field, and presumably you’ll be updated when it does become available for your use. Murdok Blog Partner Daniel Threlfall recently described the service:
Meme users will find the main Meme page to exhibit many of Twitter’s standard features. Users create a name and can follow other users and gain followers, much like Twitter. They can also share photos, videos (currently only via YouTube), and music, in addition to sharing text updates (limited to 140 characters.)
A feature unique to Meme that many believe will enhance its popularity is the “repost” button, which appears next to every feed. Other users can click the repost button and the story will appear in their own feed (similar to Facebook’s friend feed in their most recent update), which is required for commenting on a story. Meme also contains a sidebar indicator that displays how many times a story has been reposted. The repost feature adds a dimension to networking potential that could be particularly useful in viral marketing.
Twitter users are of course still waiting on the similar “retweet” button to come to Twitter.com and the Twitter API. But it’s hard to imagine that this will send Twitterers running for Yahoo’s version.
Yahoo has not had the best of luck with social media endeavors in the past, although the new Yahoo home page is semi-promising, in that it can bring other social networks that users are already using to them in their Yahoo experience.
I don’t want to pre-judge Yahoo Meme though. Hopefully it will become available for use in English soon, and we will be able to see what it is really about.
