Yahoo Launches On-Line Guide to Life in Boston

Yahoo, Inc. yesterday launched its on-line guide to life in Boston, designed by Harvard Business School students.

"We generally acted as consultants, generating ideas and designs," said designer Steven Pierce, a second year student at the Business School. "Yahoo has traditionally been a directory that provides links, but the local guides are more tailored to a specific region. We helped develop that unique angle."

Pierce said he worked on one of three development teams designing the site.

While one team focused on on-line classified advertising and another on free-time entertainment activities, Pierce and his teammates devoted their time to developing the "wild card" category specific to the Boston site.

In the last few months, Yahoo has been developing local directories that include standard categories such as Sports and Employment, as well as an original "wild card" category for each city.

For Los Angeles it is show business, for Washington D.C. it is Capitol Hill, but in designing the Boston site, Yahoo selected student life as their wild card category.

Yahoo executives said they wanted to focus on a broader audience rather than resorting to historic or entertainment attractions within the city.

"There are over 250,000 students in the greater Boston area," Pierce said. "And we feel their presence colors the whole culture of the city."

Yahoo Producer Elizabeth Collet, who graduated from the Business School in June, said the abundance of students in the Boston area shaped the company's decision to make the site's "wild card" category student life.

"In each city we have a handful of local media links, but the student link here was unique," Collet said.

Pierce added that while the category already caters to a variety of student interests, student participation and feedback is encouraged.

"We're trying to establish personal connections with students so that specific clubs or individuals can post events on-line," Pierce said. "That way, campus organizations could maximize attendance while creating an inter-campus unity that would enhance the campus experience for everyone."

But the postings will depend on how popular the site becomes.

"There's great applicability for the site here because students are so mobile," said Joanna Lawrence, a second year Business School student who worked on the classified section of the Yahoo site. "The real value added with the site is that it allows students to transcend geographic boundaries and explore a given area--the standard of living, real estate and employment opportunities--all from the same site."

Collet said past sites have attracted a faithful following and the Boston site is expected to be no exception.

"The yardstick we use to measure the site's rate of use is the number of visitors at each local site," Collet said. "We've been matching the kind of traffic the local papers get [at the other five sites] and as of now [Yahoo is] basically the most popular site next to Netscape in use."

Collet and Pierce said Yahoo's primary local competition will be boston.com, a site designed and serviced by The Boston Globe with powerful news and graphics resources.

While Yahoo lacks the news links of boston.com, the company has established media connections with local news, radio and sports affiliates which will provide the site with up-to-date local news on-line.

The site will rely on news and features form WBZ-TV News 4 New England and sports updates from ESPN Sportsticker.

Designers said the site's emphasis on local news and information will be an innovative edge in the often-impersonal world of World Wide Web design.

"As you settle into life on-line, you want information that's relevant in your day to day affairs: news, weather, arts and entertainment, all the local information you need," Collet said. "Our goal is to make life on-line more relevant to people in their daily lives."

Students designed the Yahoo site as part of a project for Associate Professor of Business Administration Marco Iansiti's class, "Managing New Product Development."

The site will be available for the general public to surf and explore today at the Cybersmith cafe from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m

Students designed the Yahoo site as part of a project for Associate Professor of Business Administration Marco Iansiti's class, "Managing New Product Development."

The site will be available for the general public to surf and explore today at the Cybersmith cafe from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m