I Don't Coo For Yuku

Idolatry

Yuku.com is a social networking site that, like Blogger, basically hosts your website on their servers. So the same way that I am writing a blog that can be seen by anyone online, but that is not saved to my hard drive, Yuku allows you to set up a "community" site that they will hold on their servers for "free." The community is pretty much a page of message boards centered around a group or dedicated to one subject or topic. So instead of blogs, they host messages boards. One topic I found to be very popular on Yuku is American Idol. As soon as you open the homepage, there is a section for featured communities, most of which have to do with television, primarily previous idols.

All About Yu

The only thing that distinguishes this message board site from any other is the option to create a profile. This is pretty standard for nearly all new sites in Web 2.0, and not just social networks. The new mentality is that if people can't personalize it, they don't want it. Either we really are a nation of greedy, narcissistic bastards, or everyone has caught onto Google and is joining the data farming/mining bandwagon. Because Yuku is free, it has to make money from advertising. And that ad space is much more valuable to advertisers if they know their niche market is going to get the message. It's the difference between a billboard and word-of-mouth: you can either get a little for a lot, or a lot for a little. Another way they get that information is by actually giving you the option to choose which ads go on your site. If you don't want any ads, you can PAY to have them taken off by signing up for a subscription. This is to make sure that one way or another, Yuku is getting a return on their investment.

Hullabaloo

Personally, I don't care for Yuku. It's like Twitter: they get all this hype for being the 'next big thing,' but at the end of the day, they are just a 140-character facebook status update. Yuku is similar in that it looks appealing on the surface, but once you get into it, there isn't much to do other than talk about whatever the topic is within that community of message boards. Some people will probably obsess over it, while others like myself, see absolutely no need for it.