Yahoo Flogging A Dead Horse?

Just in case you hadn’t had enough already, Yahoo! News has re-purposed Redfin’s controversial 60 Minutes segment into a new microsite called Real Estate: Buying And Selling Online.

Unfortunately, the original Lesly Stahl segment has been split into several short clips, losing whatever coherence the original had and making it nearly unwatchable (this was presumably done so they could sell more advertising spots). Also, the video, when played, launches sluggishly into a separate browser window — a web-video practice I thought had disappeared along with RealMedia and WindowsMedia codecs. When you lump this all together, the whole exercise really looks like a way just to repackage old content to sell ads.

That said, the site is cleanly layed out and incorporates some interesting social features; a lively comment section, video ratings (only 2.5 stars so far) and polls (60% would buy or sell a house online). It also features some cheeky copyrighting; the words ‘Old School’ under a thumbnail of a Remax agent loading a sign in a car, for instance.

Ironically, no link to Yahoo! Real Estate to be found on the site, though Yahoo! Finance (with a bad link to boot) and Yahoo! Answers are featured.

But probably my favorite feature (and one that nearly made me spit my tea over my screen) was the Most Popular Viewed Segments section, which perhaps subconsciously reveals the watching habits of the microsite’s visitors?

[h/t Matt Goyer for the head's up]

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