The hackers are back

Posted September 12th, 2008 at 7:51 am by David Filo, Chief Yahoo

 2 Comments / Filed in: Behind the Scenes, Those Crazy Yahoos

Two years ago, we opened our doors to the community of outside developers that had been “hacking” on Yahoo!, and invited them to show their stuff and create new products based on our technologies. Over the course of 24 hours, hundreds of developers attended workshops on Yahoo! technologies, pitched tents, watched a live performance by Beck, ate 400 pizzas, coded all night long, and presented 54 hacks to a judging panel of Yahoo! executives and Internet industry leaders.

Since then, we’ve taken Open Hack around the world, with hack days in London –- where lightening struck twice and it rained indoors — and in Bangalore.

This weekend, we’re getting ready to welcome hundreds more developers back to our campus in Sunnyvale for Open Hack 2008 –- including the winners from five university hack days we held last year. We’re eager for our guests to put their ingenuity and imagination to work as they poke and prod and hack away on our products and services – including some new platforms for developers. We thoroughly expect to be blown away again.

During the hack-a-thon, we’ll give developers a sneak preview of the first Y!OS components. Back in April, we announced the Yahoo! Open Strategy (Y!OS), a set of tools and platforms that will fundamentally change how Yahoo! works, opening Yahoo! up to developers to take advantage of the social aspects of our most popular products. With Y!OS, developers can create applications and features (many we’ve never even thought of) for our network and our consumers.

The Y!OS sneak preview will include the ability for developers to check out what their new applications look like in Yahoo! Mail and My Yahoo! and take advantage of social connections on Yahoo!. These components will be available only for the weekend – giving developers a taste of what they will soon be able to build and share with the world. Stay tuned for their public debut in the coming months.

Our first Open Hack was described as “transformative,” “something special,” and “off the hook” but what struck me most was the creativity and camaraderie. The stuff of our roots. Jerry and I are dedicated to keeping that spirit of openness and innovation alive, but we know that we can’t come up with all the great ideas ourselves. We can’t wait to see what is created this weekend. Hackers, bring it on.

David Filo
Chief Yahoo

Tagged: hack day, open hack day, yahoo! developer network

Rate: (Average: 4.71 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Post a Comment Bookmark This Digg This

2 Comments Add your own

Cherian Thomas | September 13th, 2008 at 10:22 pm

Are you going to have a hackday in Bangalore like last year?

Jacques Snyman | Website Design | April 20th, 2009 at 1:27 am

I like this concept, as it has an open source feel to it. There is nothing that quite gets the creative juices flowing like getting as many different individuals involved, and adding the element of healthy competition and rivalry. I wish we had events like this in South Africa, I truly do!

Post a Comment:

• Name (required)
• Mail (will not be published) (required)
• Website

Notes: Please note that Yahoo! may, in our sole discretion, reject comments for any reason we deem appropriate. Links of value to readers are welcome, but please use them sparingly - wield spam and you're banished forever.

This is a moderated site and comments will appear if and when they are approved. We will review the queue several times daily, so please don't resubmit if your comment doesn't appear immediately.