The Livestand from Yahoo! iPad app launched on Nov 2nd and became the #1 News iPad app and #2 overall app on the iTunes AppStore in 1 day. Today on Friday Nov 4th, it became the #1 app in 3 days on iTunes. You should try it yourself and compare it with Flipboard and Zite and see for yourself which one you like. Perhaps it’ll be another app on your iPad to satisfy your reading needs alongside those other great apps. There is always room for 3.
It’s testimonial to the great work done by the Livestand team, Alison, Jin, Mike, Ric and the engineering members whom I don’t know personally. I know internally it was great feat for the following reasons.
- It’s a BHAG within Yahoo! not just to build YAA (yet another App). It’s forward looking to build a platform for our users, our advertisers and our publishers.
- Along with this launch, Yahoo! also launched a platform to deploy HTML5 applications called Cocktails.
- The entire iPad experience runs on HTML5 (CSS, Javascript), inside of another Yahoo! platform which provides the native iOS services to Livestand. This Yahoo! platform will also be ported to Android as well a open sourced in 2012
- Pause: The Livestand app launched alongside 2 brand new platforms! 3 launches at once!
Why am I re-energized to work for Yahoo!?
- I haved worked on a project for the last 2 years on rebuilding Yahoo! publishing system call Yahoo! Publishing Platform and I have seen our ability to excuted on BHAG. We have launched almost 100+ Yahoo! media sites (OMG, News, Movies, TV, Sports, Finance) in more markets that I’ve seen in my 12 years at Yahoo!
- Livestand is another example of launching a product and platform at the same time and our ability to execute in less than a year shows that we can execute as an engineering community
- I found the internal docs to setup a Livestand development environment, I ran the scripts, got Livestand built on a iOS simulator and open up Safari and was able to run Livestand on my browser, in .. less than 1 hour! What? that is just awesome!
- The Cocktails platform is just a start for Yahoo! to build more native-like apps in less time and at scale
- Even with all the crap going on in the press, internally our leaders are focused, supportive and willing to tackle more BHAG
- We have been working hard at 2012 planning and I’m even more excited to see what we can excute on in the next few years
Thanks Livestand team for injecting more energy in this 12 year Yahoo! veteran !
You might also like: Why I Came To Yahoo! And Why I Am Still Here?
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