[Yahoo Profiles] is a really simple way to have a profile page online, something that millions of people still don't have, and to watch a news feed of your contacts' activities! It does almost nothing else, in fact! There's no bulk contact import, invite or discovery -- much less a secure standards based one."
While Kirkpatrick went on to describe Yahoo's Profiles as "pretty unimpressive," he projected that millions of people will use it because it's a news feed. "There's no putting the news feed back in the bottle, though," he said. "Every single major social network quickly began offering a news feed after Facebook's made the value of the feature self-evident. News feeds are everywhere, they are an arguably efficient and pleasing (for some) way to relate to an unending supply of information."
As part of its Open Strategy, Yahoo also has moved to open its Yahoo Search engine to allow third parties to add a wide variety of data to the results.