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Yahoo Kimo tasked with customizing platform for news

Local online auctioneer Yahoo Kimo Inc (雅虎奇摩) has been selected to be the US search engine’s development, engineering and production hub for its international news platform. The Taipei office confirmed the top-down corporate restructuring efforts at a media briefing yesterday.

“Yahoo Kimo won’t involve itself with foreign news content; that’s not what we’re trying to do. Rather, the Taiwan-based team will be responsible for developing customized global news platforms for each country [through] background engineering, product management and interface design,” said Rose Tsou (鄒開蓮), Yahoo Kimo’s managing director for Asia.

Tsou said more than 100 million global users per month would use the refreshed news platform developed by the team in Taiwan.

She said the Taiwanese team was chosen to become the hub because over the past 10 years, Yahoo Kimo news has managed to make its presence known in local markets and obtained first-hand information on user behavior.

The company said it anticipated more local employees will join the team in the third quarter to develop the new platform. Platform development and engineering, product design, software design and Web design were all sectors where new staff would be sought.

More than 100 people could be hired for the project, she said.

“This will be a long-term project,” Tsou said.

The company will also implement advanced technology such as cloud computing to create a single news platform. Data processing and innovation will be key elements, Tsou said.

Amid media reports that Yahoo employees have unhappy been with a corporate decision to relocate them, Yahoo Kimo’s senior director of Asia Media & Listing products, Josephine Cheng (鄭雅仁), said that foreign employees would only be relocated if necessary.

Prior to the reorganization, Yahoo news had nine news platforms and 26 versions globally.
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