Yahoo this week launched a "suggestion board" feature for a host of its vertical properties, including Yahoo Answers, Yahoo Autos, and Yahoo TV, that allows users to submit possible improvements to
the services and then vote on them. The service, which will be extended to cover other Yahoo services, a company spokesman said, is aimed at helping Yahoo's visitors make contact with the development
staff. "Visitors to sites with significant traffic usually have a tougher time lobbing input directly to site development teams about the good, the bad, and the screwed up," wrote Michael Olivier, a
senior engineering manager with Yahoo on the company blog. He added that the service was inspired by collaborative news site Digg.com. "Community-based ranking is not a new concept but, is one that
Digg.com has obviously popularized," he wrote. "In this case, we're using the model as a way to provide an open and public feedback loop for what consumers would like to see changed in our products."
