Competitive analysis is a vital part of product strategy and feeds into the design and features of a website. Dan Brown has published a great article on Digital Web.
Outlined are the steps to consider when conducting a competitive analysis as well as some useful methods to create useful artifacts.
While we’re on Yahoo!, I thought that the current storm over Yahoo Suggestions was quite humerous. Here I am posting about Yahoo! patents one minute and then posting about Yahoo copying Digg the next.
Frankly, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. The screenshots below show the similarities between Yahoo Suggestions and Digg, with voting for stories to the left of the short blurb. All looks very similar.
Yahoo:
Digg:
No doubt, Digg created a great system and UI for user generated and rated content. It is a given then, that others will “copy” it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with “reapply with pride”. Yahoo! even went so far as to credit Digg on it’s blog so I can’t see what all of the fuss is about.
I’m with Yahoo! on this one, can’t see what all of the fuss is about.
