Monday, October 1, 2007

Yahoo Avatars

The Yahoo Avatars give more personality to your messenger etcetera. Something Yahoo could add that would appeal to not only college students but college football and basketball fans would be backgrounds/wallpapers or mascots supporting your favorite team or school you’re attending. Also, it would be helpful if they added subcategories to the background tab. There are so many options it takes a while to look through all of them. The other tabs have subcategories and it's much easier to find what you're looking for. Some subcategories could be: the mall, Europe, Asia, beaches, sports, seasons/weather, school, around the house, and random.
It’s cool that you can change the Avatars’ expressions and outfits to fit your current mood. Also, you can change outfits to go along with the changing seasons, even to show what you are doing on vacation or a weekend, and also to show what hobbies you have. They have a feature where you can change your hair, skin color, and facial expressions to match your own. I thought Yahoo could have a little more variety with the hairstyles. I just finished creating my Yahoo Avatar and had to go with a ponytail because I couldn't find one that matched my hair.
Another suggestion is to make it so that you can move your Avatar. With this feature you could do things like wave to your friends, etcetera.
Overall, I think Yahoo Avatar is a neat feature that AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) doesn’t have. Yahoo has a lot of options to make your Avatar more personal. That's very important to have when offering something like Avatars.
~Dana

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Good suggestions! Especially about subcategories!

With the improvements you suggested do you think, if they were allowed, this would be a successful addition to Myspace/Facebook applications? Do you think members would use it and/or enjoy it?

Elizabeth and Dana said...

Thanks!
I think it could be successful especially since Facebook has all those applications now. However, to me all the applications are getting annoying.
I personally think Avatars are better for Yahoo and MSN Messenger etc.
I think members would use them but I'm not sure that you need them since you can upload an actual picture. However, I could see it helping to keep you protected on Myspace with all the predators, etc out there, since they wouldn't be able to tell exactly what you look like.