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The Yahoo! Youreka campaign has ended and ’somewhat officially’ launch the Yahoo! Malaysia portal. Never mind that they are a decade later than MSN and Google. In the past few months, we’ve been seeing the folks from Yahoo! come down from their offices in Singapore to engage the community of developers and users in Malaysia. It’s great and they have no competition from the other two in winning hearts and minds by meeting Malaysians face-to-face.

But I can’t help feeling like it’s 1999.
The landscape may have changed quite a bit. This time, eyeballs are locked on sticky social media/networking sites, IM chats happen in twitter, email comes through Blackberries and news through RSS readers. If you use Netvibes, you could even get all the above into one dashboard. Why is Yahoo! using aging tech to reach new users. The segment Yahoo! is targeting is not an aging group at all – late teens to 25. Is Yahoo! being arm-twisted to do this by our aging Deputy Education Minister? Or does Malaysia have a third world classification online as well so here’s the best of Yahoo’s third world tech?

I am a paying customer of two of Yahoo!’s services. They also throw great parties, engage the community and give away awesome schwags. I love Yahoo! but they need to do more than just localize a news portal. I don’t remember the last time Yahoo! has announced a new feature or a major product improvement.  Is Yahoo! going forward by going backward? Odd strategy.

Yahoo! Youreka found its winner at a party held at KL Live last night. Semi-finalists who found the elusive tag online, gathered for their final torture, I mean test, to prove their worthiness. They wiggled and pushed their way (as well as pushed JJ to the ground)  in a game of musical chairs to get to the “Sumo” round. Dressed like sumo wrestlers, the pair battled each other to see who’ll be first to form the word Youreka from the jumbled letters. The worthy one went home with a Macbook Air and an iPhone. Congratulations to the winner.

Thanks for the party Yahoo! and welcome to Malaysia.