Talking tech with high school students
January 22, 2010 on 3:27 pm | In 10 version | 6 Comments
I had the pleasure of demo’ing Yahoo! Messenger 10 to some high school students that stopped by Yahoo! yesterday.
After a personal welcome from Yahoo! co-founder David Filo, they got a Yahoo! campus tour, drank in our free coffee and soda, and met with other product managers from Mail, Connected TV, Mobile, the Yahoo! homepage, and our Privacy/Policy team.
They were all enrolled in a tech-related class in their high schools, so they had a lot of great questions about Yahoo! Messenger and internet communications in general.
Of course I worried that I would seem old to them. So I switched my desktop wallpaper to Lady Gaga, queued up Rihanna on the Yahoo! Music Player plug-in, and played the Kei$ha “Tik Tok” video when I demo’d our inline media player feature. I’m sure they saw right through me…
There was talk about Facebook, but hardly any about Twitter. They wanted to know when we’d have video calling for groups of friends, and they wanted to know when people would be able to chat with whomever they wanted on IM, instead of just friends on their same network. That was a great segue for me to talk about our partnership with Windows Live Messenger. Hopefully we’ll open up to more networks in the future.
Despite the reputation of teens being totally uninhibited online, I found this group of students thoughtful and cautious about their online usage.
On a funny note, they asked if we would hire someone if they revealed they didn’t have a MySpace page or weren’t on Facebook. I said that’s ok because when I first interviewed at Yahoo!, I had an AOL email address.
Special thanks to the students for checking out Messenger 10 and for asking great questions. I have a feeling that some years from now, I’ll be managing new products that they come up with.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
What me wants to know is: can you, or people working there, transform the Yahoo into hi5? I mean, i have contacts, right?; my contacts have contacts, right? Good! When i click on a contact, i would really love to see more about him. Contacts, images, whatever…
If privacy policy allows it…
Comment by Jademan — January 23, 2010 #
Hello to the yahoo messenger team and thanks for providing a really great instant messenger.. I have a request of sorts and i dont really know where to put it and i found this official blog, i apologize in advance if this is not the proper place to put it in..
Requests:
1. Yahoo Messenger for mac <- I really hope it catches up in terms of features (photosharing) with its windows counter parts i know its not priority but it would be very appreciated..
2. Yahoo Messenger for Blackberry <- majority of blackberry phones are wifi capable already i was hoping you would update the yahoo messenger app for blackberries to allow for wifi connections instead of relying on BES or BIS i know my request belong in the minority but i really hope you make it happen thanks again for providing a great application
Comment by Christian Echavez — January 24, 2010 #
http://denuncialo.crearblog.com/?p=1
ESTAMOS CANSADOS DE MANDAR CARTAS DENUNCIANDO ABUSOS AL YAHOO Y QUE ELLOS NO RESPONDAN. Estamos cansados de ver como suben fotos y videos personales de mujeres de las salas y yahoo no hace nada. Ayudanos a denunciar los abusos en yahoo messenger. Solo queremos que nos cuentes lo que te paso y que se escuche tu voz. Si no denunciamos yahoo nunca cambiara. Una amiga de la sala de MEX se quiso quitar la vida por que una persona le creo una pagina con sus datos. Esto no es justo, esto no esta bien Ayudanos a detener a los que abusan de los mas debiles.
Comment by escucha mi voz — January 26, 2010 #
if yahoo messenger 10 is for those 18 and older , why did you do a demo for high school kids ? isn’t that going to make them try it ? and if they did , wouldn’t that violate your own t.o.s. ?
Comment by jjjjjjjwithonej — January 27, 2010 #
well yahoo messenger 10 is a cool one but i dont know how it reaktes with tech-related class in their high schools
Comment by Nitesh Patel @techmadly — January 31, 2010 #
How about you make something more appealing to tech users and:
1. Use SSL for conversations. I can easily eavesdrop on my whole LAN’s yahoo messenger’s conversations right now.
2. Allow people to “go off the record” with some conversations, but keep the messenger archive enabled.
Just 2 IMPORTANT sugestions.
Comment by Znuff — February 4, 2010 #