Last week Yahoo announced would shut down its vertical portal Yahoo Education on September 30th, followed by its legacy product Yahoo Directory at the end of the year. This, however, does not seem to affect the collaboration between Easyuni and Yahoo Malaysia who announced a partnership for a higher education portal back in May.
Yahoo states that it will continue to shut down products that are identified as “areas outside of our core experiences where users’ needs are already well served by alternative online resources.” Yahoo Education aimed to connect users with education providers and their products and Yahoo Directory was one of the first portals that helped people to navigate the Internet.
Both products are, of course, anachronisms as today’s search and recommendation products are built upon user data and social connections. And only one day after Yahoo Education was shut down LinkedIn announced the launch of its new college finding tools.
The tools which aim to help college students to find the right college and career are based upon data points from LinkedIn members and social interaction between students and college counselors on the professional network.
Features include Decision Boards which use a combination of organizational, social and insight tools, helping students to “work the problem” from start to decision and share their progress with peers and advisors and University Rankings based upon data from graduates that show which university career led to desirable jobs. Students are also able to find universities based on their desired career, using the new University Finder tool.
The new tools are a substantial addition to LinkedIn’s offering for students which started about a year ago with the launch of University Pages.
Further Reading
- Progress Report: Continued Product Focus | Yahoo
- Social + Data = Better Decisions for Students | LinkedIn