My New Start Page

My Yahoo! has been my browser start page since the summer of 1996.

As of this morning, My Y! no longer my start page. This morning I switched to the customized iGoogle start page.

The overwhelming reason is speed. The new, improved, version of My Y! is just plain slow. They've redesigned stuff to add more graphics and to look all "Web 2.0", but in the process they've killed the usability. My Y! was a great start page because it had everything I wanted and it was wicked fast. Perhaps My Y! just became a mismanaged anachronism of the pre-RSS revolution.

iGoogle on the other hand just rocks. It's really fast, there are lots of modules, and the design is clean. Most importantly, it's open, if I need a module that doesn't exist, I can just write it myself.

There's a lesson to be learned here for all startups (including Foneshow) about user centered design and targeting your platform.