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CHARTING THE INDUSTRY
Yahoo Livestand iPad App Launches with Bonnier, Forbes, and Source Interlink AboardThursday, November 3, 2011 Yahoo’s long-awaited entrant into the iPad content aggregation category, Livestand, finally made it into the iTunes App Store  yesterday (Nov. 2) in the company’s bid to reassert its portal function in an age of Flipboard and Zite. The app allows the user to customize a one-stop portal view into Yahoo and third party content across verticals. Since it announced the project, Yahoo promised that it would serve its existing publishing partners in the product by showcasing branded media like Bonnier’s Parenting magazine, Forbes and the titles Bike, Powder and Surf from Source Interlink. The end result is to say the least a cacophony of media. That is not necessarily a good thing.The Livestand app works in landscape only mode and divides the screen into a bottom two thirds dominated by “Featured on Livestand” brands, a floating river of Yahoo, third party big media and Web-only brands like Yahoo’s entertainment vertical Scene, Scientific American, Forbes and Consumer Reports. For these featured partners, Yahoo Livestand creates a rich magazine-like experience. Tap into a brand like Motor Cyclist, for instance and the top two thirds of the screen is filled with a swipable large marquee of feature stories as well as direct tect links into major sections (in this case, Features, First Rides, Gear, Road Tests. The major sections are reiterated in a bottom small rail of thumbnails with headline blurbs. You drop into a full screen view of the lead story that you can then tap into for full copy or swipe downwards to get other content in that section. Many of the feature stories include rich full screen visuals. And in each of the branded media sections there is a Table of Contents that tries to clarify the structure with a linear catalog fo the main sections and their contents. A persistent Back button is always on the left side of every screen for pulling out of any navigational rabbit hole you may enter. The interface tries to simplify what can become a disorienting architecture of information. In any given branded media area, the content appears to be reiterated multiple times on the same scree. There is the carousel of features, the text links to sections and then the thumbnails in the bottom rail, where the user can encounter the same story three times. And when you do tap into a story from the front page of these mini-sites, you usually drop into yet another interim screen that demands yet another click to get the full text. We found ourselves tapping more than we thought necessary to get into stories we wanted. Yahoo makes the process entertaining by jazzing up the interface with effects. There are cool transitions throughout – telescoping irises, panel flips, etc. they don’t make up for the fact that we find ourselves drilling more than we want to get to content. There is also the problem of lag. The spinning circle icon indicating more content is loading is ever-present and the user comes to expect it at every click. Compared to the intelligent caching in Flipboard and Zite, which anticipates clicks and pre-loads content for a smoother experience, Livestand feels sluggish. At first glance, and with the benefit of only an evening’s interaction, the long-awaited Yahoo Livestand feels over-designed and not especially consumer-friendly. While Flipboard and Zite have gained followings by simplifying the content aggregation experience into a clean, personal magazine feel, Yahoo appears to have complicated it all into something that feels designed by committee, half a decade ago. 
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