We’re open. Have at it.

Posted October 28th, 2008 at 12:22 pm by Jay Rossiter, Yahoo! Open Strategy

 16 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

Back in April, we rolled out our vision for a more open Yahoo! — with “open” defined as rewiring Yahoo! so we could 1) open our network to outside innovation, 2) unlock the power of your social relationships, and 3) mesh your Yahoo! experience with other sites to bring you the best of the Web.

Today that vision takes another important step forward. We’re officially cutting the ribbon for talented developers everywhere, who are now welcome to come in and access our tools and data so they can build applications for a more customized, social, and relevant Yahoo! network and beyond.

I won’t bore you with the plumbing — you can head over to our developer network for those details — but let me summarize the potential impact on you the user as developers dig in and begin to build their applications.

Most obvious will be the social aspects. At a high level, we’re rolling out a social platform that will draw on the hundreds of millions of connections on Yahoo! – everything from random encounters with someone who commented on the same photo as you, to deep connections you have with friends who know nearly everything about you. By using the social contacts you already have on Yahoo! — through Mail, Messenger, Flickr, Finance, Fantasy Sports, etc. — we’ll make those social connections more active and useful. Most importantly, by enabling developers to make your social connections specific to the Yahoo! service you’re using, we believe you’ll enjoy some incredibly unique and creative new experiences that we would never have thought of.

There’s really no limit to the potential, but here are a few examples:

• Share updates and discover new things online: You’ll be able to see what your friends are doing on Yahoo! (like entering ratings on Yahoo! Movies or buzzing articles on Yahoo! Buzz) and off our network (like the blog post they just commented on, photo they’ve uploaded, movie they’ve rented, or the restaurant they just reviewed). And on the flip side, you can share your activities with them, helping them stay in touch with you more easily. Basically, we’re letting developers centralize anything you do on the Web as an update on our platform — with your explicit permission, of course. And it will be that much easier to discover great new things through the people and relationships most relevant to you. (Who knew that Uncle Jim loved “When Harry Met Sally” so much?) And publishers love this because they get exposed to more visitors whose friends implicitly recommend their content.
• A universal profile: We’ve begun the process of consolidating everyone’s Yahoo! experience onto a new, single profile so that everyone has a control panel — a central place where they can manage the new “open” applications that they decide to use and the social connections they have across Yahoo!.
• Make your Address Book truly portable: You can make your address book available to an online merchant so you can more easily ship friends a gift, or be reminded when it’s time to send them an online birthday card. Even beyond the Address Book, we’ve built the whole system with the mentality that any personal data that you put into Yahoo! is inherently your data; you own it, and you can give it to anyone or take it anywhere you would like.
• Customize Yahoo! like never before: Want to track your eBay auction? Is CNN your favorite news outlet? What’s next in your Netflix queue? Pull them all into the Yahoo! homepage so you can see everything that’s important to you in one place. We’ll open select properties like My Yahoo!, Mail and our front page so that you can let third-party applications become part of those sites as you see fit.
• Find and connect with new people: Based on whom you already know and interact with — on Yahoo! and off — we’ll make suggestions for more people to add to your social circle. And we’ll help you prioritize all of your connections, particularly as they communicate with you in Yahoo! Mail.

We’ve done all of this in a way that keeps Yahoo! as safe and secure as ever, while also building in full privacy and permission control so you’ll have complete control over things like what you broadcast publicly and what information you share with third-party sites, etc.

As of today, developers can start using our newly available data on their own web sites and even start deploying new applications into Yahoo!. You won’t find these externally developed applications built into your favorite Yahoo! service just yet — that’s coming soon. But starting today, you could discover new apps either by invitation from a friend or by noticing via your Profile or Messenger updates feed that a connection is using the app.

Reaching this step in our Yahoo! Open Strategy has been a significant effort, requiring hundreds of developers in offices around the world. We’ve even worked hand-in-hand with Google, MySpace, and many other of our traditional competitors as partners in this effort. We mean it when we say we’re open!

Like any initiative that thrives on the ingenuity of third party developers, we expect our open platforms to evolve and improve based on their feedback. This is very much an initial release. But we’re anxious to see what developers out there have up their sleeves and what you’ll do with it.

Jay Rossiter
Senior Vice President, Yahoo! Open Strategy

Tagged: social, yahoo! developer network, yahoo! open strategy

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16 Comments Add your own

ArpitNext | October 28th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

Greatest move by Yahoo! going to rock the web…

Gabriel | October 28th, 2008 at 2:49 pm

Cool new features !!!

eknirb | October 28th, 2008 at 3:27 pm

STILL waiting for the new Yahoo front door. I see a LOT of complaints on it—I wanna give it a spin! (I wrote Jerry; he hasn’t responded yet.)

AD PR | October 28th, 2008 at 7:30 pm

We are extremely excited about these tools.

Cant wait to start using them

Thank you :-D

SEOTriumph | October 28th, 2008 at 7:46 pm

This is great news. Very cool.

Varun Aggarwal | October 29th, 2008 at 1:29 am

I believe this is a brilliant move by Yahoo! and will enable it to add great value to its users’ online experiences. By encouraging & supporting projects like BOSS, SearchMonkey, OpenSocial and Y!OS, Yahoo! has reaffirmed its commitment towards an open web thus leveraging the potential of highly innovative external developers and rightfully allowing users to have full control over their data.
With the prospects of providing a better social experience, Y!OS in conjunction with Y! Profiles could be a masterstroke in Yahoo!’s strategy to have an alternate offering to social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Additionally, such moves will allow Yahoo! redefine the direction of the new web towards one that is more open and technologically superior and force competition to take note.
I just have a good feeling about this!

Thank You!

Ragul | October 29th, 2008 at 4:47 am

Great move but late..

Sid | October 29th, 2008 at 5:37 am

A very good initiative by Yahoo. This will surely have a positive impact in the world of IT.

Bruiser | October 29th, 2008 at 9:29 am

Looks like you’re ignoring all the complaints about your profile changes. Though that change doesn’t really affect me much (all I use Yahoo for is email and searching), it’s the attitude taken by you towards all of those it has affected which has me in the process of moving to gMail and iGoogle.

Good luck with your new version of…I guess we can call it Y!Facebook.

Amr Awadallah | October 29th, 2008 at 2:38 pm

1000 Congrats to all of YOS team (finally).

Jen | October 30th, 2008 at 9:19 am

awesome im very excited for the new an improved yahoo cant wait to start using the new yahoo soon!
yahoo fan since 2000 :)

Nancy | October 31st, 2008 at 3:33 pm

Where is it? How do I find it?

B. C. Schmerker | November 2nd, 2008 at 10:12 pm

Open Strategy is a good move for updating the full span of Yahoo! services to keep up with competitors. As of this post, I’m trading ideas with other users at Bix to gain perspective on what sort of user interface will be best for a software redesign there; ideally it should be possible to integrate features from 360 into a Bix Beta and make Entries from Bix available via LAUNCHcast for the userpages of other applicable services.

gk | November 5th, 2008 at 8:19 pm

I think that open Strategy is a great move for Yahoo. I noticed that the domain name “openstrategy.com” has been taken. It says “This domain is not available. It is not for sale either. At least not at current market price…” I wonder what that domain name would be worth?

Interactive SEO | December 18th, 2008 at 9:24 am

Cant wait!!
Lets see if this is any good

Elle | November 17th, 2009 at 1:26 am

I am reflecting on that development…now a year later.
the open strategy has worked fine for me.