Yahoo is Going Portuguese Hound to Outwit Twitter

Brazil, a Portuguese speaking country is the 10th largest economy in the world and Yahoo has decided to get in on the action by coming up with a clone Twitter. The economic down-turn has affected Brazil to some degree, but its Foreign Minister Guido Mantega has announced it is cautiously optimistic for a turn around at years end.

According to David Ruiz, a blogger, systems analyst and senior programmer in Brazil, Yahoo has released a Twitter clone called Yahoo Meme in Portuguese. The Yahoo Meme is by invitation only. David Ruiz received his invitation to the alpha-version of the Twitter-like social networking site. Interestingly, Yahoo Meme uses a dog instead of the familiar Twitter bird.

Mr. Ruiz says the term "meme" is an adaptation of the scientific observations of Richard Dawkins in his book, "The Selfish Gene". On the Internet, a "meme" is used to describe a sort of fever of popular content available to everyone. In the Yahoo sense of the term for its new social networking site, Yahoo Meme, it is a term which expresses the notion of free and expanded, within the context of the original idea.

Simply put, Yahoo Meme is easy to access and easy to use. A click on the call, sign in and name your meme, attach your url, give a less than a 100 character description and you are Go. A screen lists all the meme images which allows users to verify who is meme-ing you. Users can post videos, images, music and text in the same way as Twitter. The search feature needs some tweaking, but it is pretty new.

According to Ruiz, the Alph-phase is closed and he has only a few invites available for distribution. He distinguishes Twitter from Memes conceptually, saying memes is more like the "fever" of the moment. The actual differences between Twitter and Yahoo Memes may be a distinction without a difference. Except Yahoo Memes is in the Portuguese language.

© 2009 PhysOrg.com