John Battelle reports on a conversation with Y!’s Jeff Weiner; it sounds like John heard more or less the same things I did. At the time I didn’t say too much about Jeff’s remarks, but I think that John’s piece, while good, bypassed a real interesting part. Y!’s rallying cry is FUSE: Find, Use, Share, and Expand. So do you think they can beat Google at finding or using? Well maybe, but I wouldn’t want to bet a business on it. But how about Share and Expand? Y! has relationships with a lot of people out there: email relationships, finance relationships, chatter relationships, you name it. Suppose they can make it real easy and attractive for the people in all those relationships to put some back; to Share stuff and Expand the Web. Being first in line to help everyone Find and Use that good new stuff? Sounds like a plausible line of attack to me.
