NY Times has an almost-unbelievably detailed article about the future of TV at Yahoo!.
On the content side of things Yahoo! have always been an aggregator of third-party content (buying it in, branding it Yahoo!, etc). However it would appear that they are going to start commissioning bespoke audio-video material for IP delivery. Hmmm, interesting, but not as interesting as these few lines:
One of Yahoo’s secret weapons, Mr. Braun says, is that it can personalize information for the interests of each user, such as its My Yahoo page and the song recommendations provided to users of its music service. Mr. Braun is weaving this technology into a video player Yahoo will introduce near the end of the year.
“It will almost be like a television set,” Mr. Braun said, except as people watch one program, on the center of the player, other areas will offer additional programming choices, based on their past viewing habits. It will let them use Yahoo’s video search to find programs from amateur videographers and video bloggers. And it will, of course, promote the glitzy shows Mr. Braun is creating.
“People want the freedom to do exactly what they want to do,” he said. “But they also like to be programmed to and reminded of the different things that exist. Yahoo is in a position to do both of those.”
Very interesting – some kind of collaborative filtering system meets Yahoo! search technology?
So, I wonder whether this personalisation and recommendation is just within the relatively small scope of the programming Yahoo! commission, or whether this will also include IPTV programming made available by third-parties (ie back to Yahoo!’s strong aggregation model)? And if so, who those third parties will be?