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October 18, 1996
I'll give a brief history of Yahoo -- how it all started,
and how it has evolved from being a hobby of two Stanford grad
students to a successful Internet company. I'll talk about my
role in designing the overall categorization/classification scheme,
and the challenges associated with maintaining a large, heterogenous
database, keeping it as intuitive, efficient, logical, and consistent
as possible. In particular I'll explore several interesting issues
that Yahoo faces with regards to information organization, including:
- is it possible to devise a classification scheme that is
simultaneously useful to both the naive and expert user; simultaneously
optimal for users in different geographic regions (and speaking
different native languages);
- what responsibility falls on directories like Yahoo to remain
neutral and objective in presenting information, and to what
extent is that possible when the mere act of classification is
inherently editorial;
- how can the extensive amount of information contained in
Yahoo's tree-like structure be presented to users in a clean
and clear user interface?
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Srinija Srinivasan manages Yahoo! Inc.'s team of Surfers and
is responsible for the design and maintenance of Yahoo!'s overall
classification and organization scheme, making it the most intuitive,
robust, expandable and efficient guide for information and online
discovery. Prior to joining Yahoo!, Srinija was involved with
the Cyc Project, a ten year artificial intelligence effort to
build an immense database of human commonsense knowledge, via
two companies: Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation
(MCC) and Cycorp.
Among Srinija's other professional and academic accomplishments,
she has published research papers in journals including Government
Information Quarterly and the Journal of Technology Transfer.
She was named one of "The Net 50" by Newsweek (December
25, 1995) and chosen one of the "40 Under 40" by San
Francisco Focus (July 1996), and has also appeared in Fortune
(March 4, 1996), Wired (May 1996), and other magazines.
Srinija holds a B.S. with distinction from Stanford University
in Symbolic Systems including course work in Japan, and is proficient
in both written and spoken Japanese.
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