Yahoo’s CTO Ari Balogh and Chief Architect (Platforms) Neal Sample filled in a few more details today around their new Yahoo Open Strategy (called YOS internally).
Background
Yahoo wants to turn itself into one big social network-driven site, and simultaneously open many of its core services to get users and developers thinking of Yahoo as their Internet hub. They’ve been talking about parts of this since last November. First were details about how webmail will serve as the social networking hub, followed by more tidbits in January. In March they joined the Google-led Open Social initiative. And they’ve made a series of announcements around Search Monkey which will allow third parties to enhance Yahoo search with structured data.
Yahoo Open Strategy
Yahoo mashes the social stuff and the open stuff under the same banner of YOS. There are three components to the additional news announced today – platformization, opening services, and portability. It’s important to note that nothing has launched, and there’s no public timetable for the launch of any particular part of YOS. Sample said in a briefing today that the pieces will be released over the coming months.
Below is Balogh’s presentation at the web 2.0 Expo:
Platformization: Users will notice this most, as the overall Yahoo experience becomes social. This is driven by (1) the reduction of the dozens of profiles (for each service) they have today to a single, unified Yahoo user profile, and (2) the promotion of the email inbox as the center of the Yahoo experience. Once the profile is centralized they will begin to socialize the services. Think friends lists, activity streams, etc.
Clearly Yahoo isn’t bolting yet another social network onto their existing services. They keep saying that, of course. But even the fact that they refer to this part of it as “platformization” internally shows how they are thinking of this. They’re moving Yahoo to a massive new social network platform, and rewriting large parts of the core functionality.
Open Yahoo: This encompasses a few different things. First, they are now deeply involved in OpenSocial and will allow developers to get access via those common APIs. But they are layering their many existing (and planned) APIs on top of OpenSocial to allow deeper integration with Yahoo services. Users will be able to add these third party applications, built on Open Social and the Yahoo APIs, into Yahoo.
The other piece of this is Yahoo Application Platform (YAP) – which will be a direct competitor to Google App Engine. Users can host their independent applications on Yahoo’s bandwidth, storage, database and CPU resources. At first they’ll support SecurePHP applications only, but they’ll expand to additional languages over time. The model will be very similar to Google’s – free usage up to a point, metered after that. They’ll also offer various developer tools as well.
Portability. Yahoo is also going to promote the spread of Yahoo around the web to third party apps and services. This isn’t just widgets – they’ll also let user data out of the ecosystem. For example, Sample said in the briefing, they’ll facilitate the synchronization of the Yahoo address book with Plaxo (Facebook hated the idea of users doing this, by the way).
Yahoo: Sticky, Viral, Friendly
Yahoo continues to compete in search marketing, the big driver of revenue. But they realize they’ll always be second to Google in that game. So the win for them is to make Yahoo as sticky, friendly, and viral as possible. They have 500 million worldwide visitors per month – nearly 60% of the total Internet audience visits a Yahoo property every month (Google has 72%) (Comscore). That audience can clearly be leveraged, and this is a war that, unlike search marketing, Yahoo thinks they can win.
They still, of course, have to actually launch this massive project – for now it’s all ideas and vaporware. And no one knows what Microsoft thinks of all this, or what happens to YOS if that deal is done.
Sounds interesting. I’m especially looking forward to the app hosting, the more competition in this segment the better. It’ll be nice to have some php support.
Cool moves but too late to prevent the MSFT acquisition. Hopefully Microsoft will use these developments as a stepping stone to keep the movement going forward.
Yahoo is way friendlier than someone I know…
That merging of profiles is long overdue and will be welcomed with open arms. They have some good stuff going for them, just need a little polish. And despite the rhetoric all over the web (which gets way out of proportion), they’re a fairly solid company.
I’m seriously.
I love it! Yahoo is suddenly seeming like an re-energized company. They can probably never overcome Google’s dominating lead in search marketing; what I think they should do is fully adopt Adsense in their results and concentrate solely on their other web properties. Yahoo spanks Google as far as content is concerned, and they have a HUGE amount of users visiting Yahoo Mail, using Messenger and Yahoo chat and playing Yahoo games.
Great?
They’re trying to scare Microsoft….Come on Y…’OS’?
Maybe good for the masses and will increase Yahoo market equity, but for professionals my not be such a hot idea to blend everything in one pot!
I like my Yahoo mail separate from my social networking sphere!
But it looks like Yahoo making everything Yahoo mail account driven; hence, forcing the users to relinquish anonymity of the original Yahoo account, that might have been establish for personal nature!
I feel Yahoo is kidnapping and blackmailing the user based on user’s affinity to the original email account that was probably set up for personal usage.
One way to circumvent this, is to open a new Yahoo account that you can use for social networking while the original account, if you have one, keep it personal.
Also when signing up for different Yahoo services you may wan to specify a different email account for communication, because you will receive tons of email.
Yahoo definitely doing a great job leveraging their email services to tie over service to it. Great business sense, but let the user beware!
well, everything you just said only matters, if you’re shady
When will Yahoo Application Platform (YAP) launch?
“for now it’s all ideas and vaporware. ” Agreed.
Yahoo! is a great company – good to see that Google App Engine is getting some competition, especially in the PHP field (which Yahoo! knows best.)
Yahoo! is really taking a new direction in their business – as Shawn Farner (#4) said, they’ll probably not be able to have their Search as mainstream as Google’s (even though their search has improved quite a bit) but they will be able to find other profitable areas.
I think it’s time for everyone that is absolutely *FOR GOOGLE* to reconsider Yahoo!’s offerings. They started out as a huge internet player, dwindled as Google improved things that Yahoo did wrong, and now Yahoo isn’t getting enough of the spotlight because people think they suck. Their Mail is great, startpage is excellently done, and their mobile offerings are very good. Competition can only improve the best and filter out the worse. Go Yahoo!
First off let me state I am totally against a Microsoft-Yahoo merger.
The one good thing to come out of all this though is the Microsoft threat seems to have lit a fire under Yahoo. They seem to realize that they must refocus and innovate quicker than they ever have in the past.
If Microsoft walks, Yahoo will be a better company than before.
If Microsoft does buy them however, I forecast the end to this and many of the other new efforts Yahoo has been developing. In other words, I forecast disaster.
If anything, the past few months have been helpful for Yahoo. With the MS grip tightening, they seem to be in the mode of “innovate or die”.
At this point, with the launch of these new services, a bigger thorn has been thrown into Microsoft’s side. If MS goes ahead with the takeover, these initiatives launched today are likely to be canceled, probably leading to even more bad blood between the developer community and MS.
Additionally, there’s been some concern that the culture of Yahoo is totally different to that of MS and that many talented Yahoo engineers are likely to leave in the event of a takeover.
MS’s plans are looking to be more distasteful every day.
I’m still wary of a major web service like search, mail, chat or news becoming an “all eyes on me” social network. These are areas where I like privacy, and I have the ability to “share” or promote things I want others to see through facebook, or Google’s shared items. It’s certainly an exciting idea for Yahoo to bring more openness, but what may be a lot of fun in 2010, sounds like a lot of noise in 2008. I can’t see through the static.
That being said, this comes across as a “me 3″ announcement. Regardless of starting in November, they will be the 3rd to announce an application platform, and one in a long of websites (which will eventually just become common practice) to support widgets through OpenSocial. The web is now a platform – we get that, and most companies should get that.
That all being said, it will be fun to build apps into yahoo search, yahoo mail, etc, and while developers may find it hard to monetize, yahoo will only benefit from increased page views.
Outside the hall of mirrors, things like Yahoo Groups, YahooMail, and Yahoo Finance are very well-liked. So if it goes all social, late adopters will actually be able to use a social network, because Yahoo’s the only thing most of them are familiar with…
Yahoo will be successful {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/iMML0NmEST_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”Yahoo will be successful ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/zfjL7rBO7o”}}}
Yahoo! Hopes to mush everything together and create a massive social network.
With all of their services, this is a very good idea that has lots of potential to compete with Facebook, MySpace, and the likes.
(And I also fee somewhat special for sending in this story to TechCrunch a a news tip. Not sure if the posting had anything to do with it though… But still…)
Yahoo has been promising this “Universal Profile System” as a replacement for 360 since last October. It still lacks a lot of specifics and I’m tired of waiting for Yahoo actually have a reliable blogging platform.
This looks like everything people were expecting and a little extra. This is pushing the boundaries of localized Web communites (both social and search) and truly moving towards and open Internet where there are no private sandboxes (sorry Facebook).
Good for Yahoo!, but in the case of the Microsoft acquisition I cannot imagine this ever setting the light of day, at least not from MSFT/YHOO.
Y! continues to surprise the world… head starting OPEN with YOS and YAP…
they are stupid company.. its 2008 and why cant i save my yahoo web chats on web?? i find that service so useful in gmail chats.. i often go back to loook for things discussed.. but may be thats just me..
Enters Ycosm, yahoo!!!
TechCrunch comment: yahoo!’s new open strategy {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/76pXhNXkLH_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”TechCrunch comment: yahoo!’s new open strategy ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/yUDVJBUc7k”}}}
http://www.flic...345696/sizes/l/
My new GE phone has a Google Button. FOR REAL. Beat that Yahoo!
Meanwhile I hypocritically use YUI in our new project. But boy is it a pain to use!!!
A GOOG button!!!
To go with my brand new 562 area code!
y! could do it, but google imo has showed real strength beyond search again and again… with mostly algos. that’s tough to beat
No acquisition for Y! this year…
Sounds familiar…
http://www.flic...361764/sizes/l/
Here’s a better pic. Yahoo could never get on to people’s phones I bet.
When I was in Canada, you couldn’t even get Google on your phone.
Only in California??
BTW, Yahoo can’t save itself this way. This is stuff for dorks. They need a way to make sexy with the code. It may even be too late for that. A GOOG BUTTON. I am in heaven.
As a Yahoo user and featured-blogger for some years now, I’m still confused.
We were promised a “Universal Profile System” as a replacement for 360 (which, by the way, worked well until Yahoo decided not to fix things) ’sometime after the first of the year’.
I speculated with a friend on our ‘360 Rumor Control’ blog that this would likely be no later than the end of Q1, as Yahoo was publicly-traded, and such news made good sense to reveal at a quarterly con-call to the Wall Street folks.
Guess we were wrong.
There are many of us left using the unique features of 360, and still hanging in there with other Yahoo properties, even though most of them are full of bugs.
I remember the days when they were groundbreaking. Now, they just — well — suck (if I may be forgiven that rather banal term).
So — here’s a heavy sigh, and another wish to the Yahoo Gods to finally make good on a killer app.
Cheers!
Will, I suspect Yahoo might have given us our new profiles if Microsoft hadn’t decided to pull the run out from under us. Dear God, please make Microsoft go away. Amen.
I have been advertising online for 10 years and NEVER have i dealt with such arrogant fools as the people at yahoo. Here is my suggestion to Yang – take the offer before it goes away. You don’t deserve the premium MSFT is offering you and you only get one chance to get out. Either way you will never have my business again – the $50K i give to google a month is a pleasure when compared to dealing with your idiots. Goodnight & goodluck – NOT!
@27 No Y! buttons on phones? There are all over the phones in Japan. See http://www.flic...lins/359714308/
very helpful forwarding to the tech team {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/whHxV7hiOv_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”very helpful forwarding to the tech team ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/loGg8RLIGQ”}}}
Too complicated. Wrong model. Try the top-down platform re-definition and you’ll just freeze all innovation.
Go back to throwing spaghetti at the wall, then improving it relentlessly, buying a few jewels here and there, then knitting together only the pieces that obviously go together.
Yahoo! Loved. Doomed.
Lots more bells and whistles,lots more talk-talk-talk.Yahoo 360 was a great,simple,and user friendly system.They have been yapping for months about the UPS upgrades while letting it all fall to ruin.Spare me all the glitz and glitter.Those of us on 360 like it the way it is,JUST FIX IT!!.And leave all the noise and clutter to MySpace..
Neat idea. Hopefully they have something to show for it soon.
I don’t know if they can beat GAE for app hosting though. Google has always been notoriously fast, and Django looks like a fun environment to code in.
hope yahoo can do it!
I don’t get it.
excellent idea
where do you host that Balogh’s video???
it loads so badly…
I’ve been unable to watch it
I had to search and view it over here: http://news.zdn..._22-198767.html
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yahoo! strategy has roots {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/pVldigCo7m_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”yahoo! strategy has roots ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/6zFxomWauP”}}}
I like the ideas that Yahoo! is throwing out, but until it becomes a reality they are still #2 in the game. Yahoo will never take over Google in search, but breaking in on this market may help them leverage some more internet users back.
I am not a developer so I won’t exactly be coding little apps and that, but I think if they take the examples from Facebook and contact many of their developers about doing Yahoo apps, they may do well.
I like the idea of SearchMonkey and think it will do well if they can grab the developers from the start. I’ve been thinking of the uses for Search Monkey and the biggest one for me is music related; Yahoo can easily get someone like Last.fm to create a widget where when I search for a band it gives me reviews, samples, all right there in the search engine – not to mention blending it in so I can see if my friends listen to the band or get recommendations on what other kind of music I’d like.
Of course this is just one idea, and with this engine there are a ton of possibilities. If Yahoo can get some people behind them and start doing this right, I may switch to Yahoo for more media related stuff (or whatever else they develop well) – in the same way that I’ve started using Mahalo for more information based searches where I want relevant results that give me info and a summary from many sources and gives it to me immediately – rather than googling it and getting sent to 80 other pages.
I love it – people like the underdog. Only when Yahoo is attacked by the evil empire, it’s perception changes from mediocre to exciting, moves from only being far second to Google to potentially kicking its butt.
I was a blogger on Yahoo! 360, and love the community.
I hope what ever is coming down the line (without Micro$oft’s involvement), will be good for Yahoo!, and the bloggers there.
I’m a pro user of Flickr, and would be pissed if all of a sudden it because a property of MS.
Yahoo stinks at the moment all the people on 360 will tell you, we have been let down to the point that we are leaving in droves! they are not taking care of the customers they had, they are all off somewhere else playing! Heck they wont have a company soon to sell!
friendly, that is the magic word, friendly and impacting,,,,,a vote for yahoo
The heady plans are smart but, quite likely, come too late.
-Des
http://techwatc...ocial-platform/
What a joke. Everything seems to be a mirror of GOOG, with a tiny adjustment (Python vs. PHP). Most of us that care already have a centralized acct around a competing service. Everyone has a Y! mail acct, and that is mostly related to switching costs for an email that’s 10 yrs old. I guess searchmonkey sounds somewhat interesting, but not game-changing, and certainly not a defensible differentiator. Isn’t the real issue monetization?
@31, That Y! button sucks. Mine is on my actual cordless phone. You’re talking about mobile deals in some foreign country. Anybody can do that.
This is a pretty good strategy — if you look at why it’s intended. I think this is meant to pacify shareholders.
There’s some pie-in-the-sky stuff here for Yahoo. They’ve promised stuff for quite some time, so their ability to deliver is suspect. So, I take the strategy plan with a grain of salt. But, there’s some technical merit to it, so it’s not invalid by any stretch.
But consider the upside to Yahoo of putting this out there *before Saturday’s big MS deadline*. There could be just enough desire for this plan, in combination with MS’s own strategy, to make MS consider a bump in their current offer. If the deadline passes and MS says adios, then Yahoo can claim they have plan to correct the ship.
One thing I’d like to comment on: Putting names on strategic initiatives (like YOS) is straight out of a Dilbert comic strip. Enough with the culture differences between Yahoo and MS; their both corporate behemoths with pointy-haired bosses running around the place.