When venturing into Yahoo! Corporate Information territory, you'll discover "Yodel Anecdotal" -- http://yodel.yahoo.com/ -- Yahoo!'s coporate blog in bright orange and purple.
Larry Tessler, VP User Experience & Design, posted "Design out of the box" christening the Yodel Anecdotal blog on August 11, 2006. Posts are frequent, almost daily, with Yodelers ranging from Blog Editor -- Nicki Dugan, CIO -- Lars Rabbe, CFO -- Sue Deckler, Jeremy Johnson -- Platform Engineering, to Chief Yahoo! -- David Filo and Intern -- Doreen Bloch.
The mix of personal voices enhances the purpose of this blog:
Yodel = to sing with frequent changes from the ordinary voice
Anecdotal = a short account of a particular incident or event of an interesting or amusing nature
Source: http://www.dictionary.com/
This blog, like the official Google Blog -- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ -- stands out from other blogs like those in my blogroll that only have one or two authors. Having different company employees voice their experiences helps users learn about the company and its people.
The other benefit is fresh content published more frequently. One drawback may be coordinating & authorizing blog-writing efforts for publication.
When comparing "Yodel Anecdotal" to the "Google Blog", I found myself drawn to the Yodel blog because of the energizing colors. In contrast, Google's blog appears clinical and less inviting. Another reason the Google Blog isn't as appealing is because there's no "Comments" option besides the occasional "Your Feedback". All Yahoo! posts have a "Comments" option that extends an invitation to readers to add content -- appropriate in our user-generated content world.
Yahoo! Lists 24 official blogs and 2 unofficial blogs on Yodel Anecdotal. In contrast, other than Google’s “Inside Google Desktop”, no other Google blogs are shown under “More Google Blogs” -- the space is blank.
What’s the purpose of the Google Blog?
"Googler insights into product and technology news and our culture."
Yahoo! and Google use two different approaches in communicating the purpose of their blog. Yahoo! uses a creative blog title while Google uses their company name followed by this one-liner spelling out their Blog’s purpose.
In their own right, both Yodel Anecdotal and Google Blog are effective in communicating messages, but which blog appeals more to this century’s users and why?
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