Thursday, February 14, 2008

Tech Ticker revisited - Yahoo innovation?

The other day, I noted that Yahoo finance was about to launch a new feature called 'Tech Ticker'. I blogged about it here and watched the launch with a few friends (Yes, the video worked!).

I've been watching Tech Ticker for a few days. The layout is clean, and overall, so far, is a good 'quick take'. The video auto-playing isn't even annoying, which at least to me, usually is.

One cool piece revealed that Jim Cramer went to school with Steve Ballmer and they played poker together. Cramer went on to extrapolate that this IS why Microsoft will win Yahoo. "Steve doesn't quit". While I'm not sure that's a great quality for a CEO in this particular case and / or analogy, it was a neat piece. The scary part is Cramer seemed calm....

On the converse side, Tech Ticker's brief interlude with Michael Arrington was outright lame. I'm really hoping he was kidding or just having a little fun. Arrington has, no doubt carved out one of the largest niches in blog 'breaking news' and I respect that (and read TechCrunch, like many, at least once a day). The brief and somewhat weird interview was then compounded by Sarah Lacy commenting "If he hasn't written about you, you don't exist" and calling Michael "Larger than life". I must be missing something here :)

Kara Swisher of AllThingsD has been quoted on Tech Ticker as well. Definitely refreshing, as Swisher can be counted on for some pretty objective reporting, particularly with the recent Yahoo-Microsoft-News Corp-AOL-and-whoever-is-next deal.

The reruns are all there and can be accessed from the links above, along with the rest of the launch content. See what you think. Regardless of the fact that Yahoo is currently in play (understatement?), it appears they have a better-than-decent product here.