Yahoo’s new CTO, Ari Balogh, presented the new kind of Yahoo! at the Web2.0 expo in San Francisco. And I must say, I like it! In a nutshell, Yahoo is going to:
1) Open up their platform, enabling developers to build their own applications for various Yahoo! products like mail, my yahoo, search and even Yahoo’s frontpage on yahoo.com.
2) Unlock the social data that lives within Yahoo’s databases (like mail contacts, messenger contacts).
I think Yahoo gets it. They could have also kept all the data for themselves in an attempt to build a new social app. Instead, they completely open up which enables the developer community to build some brilliant applications on top of Yahoo’s platform and data. And, eventually, chances are good that Yahoo’s platform ends up as the place to be.
More on these developments on Yahoo’s blog and in the video below:
It’s indeed an interesting move by Yahoo!
ReadWriteWeb also has an interesting article covering this topic:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_apps_platform.php
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