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Yahoo! Research Makes a Splash at WWW2006
Party-goers attempt to solve Yahoodoku Purple umbrellas, top-notch technical talks, and an unforgettable party with a Yahoo! twist on a puzzle made popular in Japan were some of the highlights from this year’s Yahoo! presence at the 15th International World Wide Web conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, held from May 22nd to the 26th.
As a Platinum Sponsor of the five-day event, Yahoo! had an unmatched presence, led prominently by significant contributions from its research team. Yahoo! Research had five refereed papers, all extremely well-received and one of which was nominated for best paper. In addition, head of Yahoo! Research Prabhakar Raghavan served as Panel Co-chair for the conference; Raghavan, Ricardo Baeza-Yates, and Andrei Broder gave a tutorial; Ron Brachman chaired a panel; and Andrew Tomkins co-chaired a workshop.
Compared with prior WWW conferences, this year’s event had a greater focus on problems of interest to Yahoo! Research and overall, displayed a more significant industry research presence. Some of the themes were:
- Spam – several papers focused on various aspects of unwanted intrusions, ranging from links to keywords to blogs
- User behavior data, usually in the form of clickstreams
- Advertising models
- New search paradigms, including a paper on browsing through comparative results
One of the highlights of the week was an extremely well-attended invitation-only party for Yahoo! friends and potential recruits at The Living Room in Edinburgh. In exemplary Yahoo! style, coasters that were distributed at the party challenged attendees to Yahoodoku, Yahoo!’s own version of the popular puzzle, Sudoku. Partiers were seen engrossed in puzzle-solving as they sipped their drinks and chatted with each other.
Perhaps the most notable image from the event occurred after purple and white Yahoo! umbrellas were distributed to attendees, when, as if perfectly timed by a mysterious group of weather Yahoos, rain began to pour as the party ended. Prominent researchers from competing companies were seen sporting open purple umbrellas, giving Yahoo! a rare and significant photo opportunity.
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