Yahoo!: 1000 Layoffs, Brickhouse Head Out, oneConnect On

I seem to have too many Yahoo! related posts lately - well, they have been in hot news.

Today was the spooky day people have been waiting for.  About 1000 Yahoos were laid off, including Salim Ismail, head of the Brickhouse division, which reviews internally submitted ideas by Yahoo! employees and turns some of them into products.  Ismail says he volunteered to take the layoff package and go.  Not a bad choice:  He has reviewed about 3000 ideas at Yahoo! and has some thoughts on what startup to build.  More on TechCrunch.

Last but not Least, Yahoo! will launch a new product in Q2: oneConnect - a mobile social application built around user's phone address book or contact list.  Not much details are given, but users can get updates from various social networks to their contact lists, they can get the latest updates (like the Facebook Minifeed) on their cell phone, etc.  Once again - like the yahoo.com portal - Yahoo wants to be the user's starting point, this time on the cell phone.  If anybody is capable of doing that, it's them.

Here's the oneConnect site - also see the TechCrunch coverage.