I’m here at Yahoo Brickhouse in San Francisco for an event where Yahoo will preview its new Application Platform for developers, the latest effort in an ongoing strategy to be more “open” that was announced last April.
Executive Vice President Ash Patel will be joined by Jay Rossiter, Cody Simms, Neal Sample, and Sam Pullara to explain for the first time in depth just what the Application Platform is all about. I’ll be posting my notes here as I learn more.
The release of the application platform comes on the heals of a new profile system, which didn’t exactly launch without a hitch.
- The platform isn’t being rolled out today; apparently it’s coming sometime next week.
- 11:51am – Ash Patel is kicking things off by saying that we’ll be doing a “deep dive” into Yahoo’s open strategy. He is going back a bit in history explaining how there was once a “Jerry fund” that later evolved into Yahoo’s developer program, which works on APIs and other tools. When Jerry took over as CEO, he wanted to turn Yahoo into a platform company and have products that enforce that notion. Move away from collection of products to platform that has a developer ecosystem of developers, publishers, and advertisers.
- 11:54am – A strength and weakness of Yahoo is that it has a lot of data. Developers have wanted to tap into it but it hasn’t been easy to do, especially with all the acquisitions. So Patel sketched up diagrams with Jerry that embodied a vision for platform that provided single consumer experience. Then the challenge was turning it into an “end state”, something that actually allowed products to come alive and change the Yahoo consumer’s experience.
- 11:55am – Over period of 3-4 weeks teams worked on specing various elements out and come up compelling story that was called the “Sharon Deck” (named after the typical Yahoo user). They walked through the typical Yahoo user’s experience after all the changes were put in place. That’s when they decided it was something they really had to do, so they formed a team that became the YOS (Yahoo Open Strategy) team. It’s what they’ve spent the better part of a year on. Search Monkey and BOSS were early parts of the strategy, but biggest was the new profile from last week.
- 11:57am – The profile system is like an iceberg – you’re only seeing 1/9 of what’s going on. Youll start seeing other products that leverage the profile system. Neil started on platform side but has now moved to product side so products actually take advantage of the platform. Open Mail, Galaxy experience, new frontpage all will take advantage of the platform and its openness. It’s all about rewiring the user experience so it engages users, changes Yahoo from a walled garden to the “best of the web”.
- 11:59am – Today we’re going into the details of the platform, will be an interactive presentation so we can ask questions during it. Neil is now introducing us to the team (”brain trust”) behind YOS – Rossiter, Sample, Simms, and Pullara.
- Jay Rossiter (Head of Yahoo Open Strategy) is now up onstage. He was pulled into the “big bet” late last year. At the start, he wasn’t sure how serious Yahoo was about all this, especially because it would take such a significant effort. So he was a bit skeptical but within a day, after talking with Jerry, Sue and Dave Filo, he was convinced it was serious and Yahoo was throwing its weight behind it. So he came onboard.
- 12:02pm – Hundreds of people within Yahoo are working on the platform – it’s a large scale development. Has both executive-level buy-in and the developers behind it. And now we’ve delivered it. This doesn’t always happen because often companies have executive-level buy-in but no traction among engineers. At Yahoo, the problem has traditionally been the opposite – too many ideas among engineers but little executive guidance.
- 12:04pm – Developer platform coming next week. We had an open hack day last month, second in history of company. Challenge was to give developers API and 24 hours to build an interesting application. Then we had an award ceremony. That was a developer preview, but next week we actually bring these APIs out.
- 12:06pm – Goals of YOS: 1) establish a social dimension, 2) open properties to 3rd party developers like never before (so they can blend their ideas with Yahoo’s own), and 3) rewire yahoo itself with social features (this part’s going to be a “rolling thunder” with social products coming online over time)
- 12:08pm – Rossiter is now going to talk about the technology stack behind YOS. The Yahoo Developer Network (YDN) is the “front door” for developers, with full documentation and details about Yahoo’s developer services. YOS has been built on top of Yahoo’s cloud intrastructure, which makes it possible to launch services on a large scale across many countries (the new profiles launched for 31 countries, for example). On top of this infrastructure sits a social platform that embodies one social graph and profile record. On top of that is an application platform that provides a framework for developing social apps. And on top of that is a web services and query language that provides one mechanism for accessing and mashing up data. The application platform enables apps on Yahoo itself whereas the web services and query language can be used to create apps off Yahoo with Yahoo data.
- 12:14pm – Right now Yahoo users have multiple user accounts for different services. So first step is collapsing all of those identities into one and then map that single identity to a social graph where it’s connected with others (friends, etc). This part alone is quite a big task, but from a user’s point of view it’s very beneficial. We had to rework our internal login components so we had an identity record that was safe to share across applications, even ones managed by third parties.
- 12:15pm – Then we wanted users to be able to map this single identity with other identities on the web (Amazon, Twitter, Digg, Facebook, Gmail, CNN, Windows, Google, eBay, etc). One of the things we’re going to do is allow people to use other accounts (like Gmail) and log into Yahoo with them.
- 12:16pm – Once we’ve tied user accounts together from across the web, we can bring in information from these other services and make it usable on Yahoo. Conversely, we’ll make this aggregated information available for other services as well. It’s an in and out service, not just a data trap. We’re using oAuth to do this so users can break access for services when desired.
- 12:19pm – You can give temporary access to your profile through a token so you don’t give up too much control. You can also set it up so that services either have permanent access to your profile data or only for a set number of days. Granular controls are also available that let you give access to particular parts of your profile but not others (this is an extension to the oAuth spec).
- 12:20pm – Yahoo is concerned about making sure that these controls are intuitive, which is why it’s being careful about how it rolls them out among its userbase. They are considering language tweaks and tutorials as some of the ways to explain things better. Getting the user experience right is key, as is setting the right defaults for users. Users will also have the ability to give developers visibility of their data but not access (a nuanced point that controls the flow of data)
- 12:23pm – Some of our competitors tend to train users to not care about these sort of issues. Yahoo will make sure that users know exactly how programs will access their information, and the prompt should look fairly scary (”skull and cross bones”) so users actually think about it (they appear to be contrasting their method with that of Facebook’s). This will encourage developers to do the right thing. This warning and permission granting system will hold true whether the user is installing something onto Yahoo or using an app off Yahoo that accesses Yahoo data.
- 12:30pm – We’re working on the ability to do authenticated requests so banks and other security-minded institutions can tie their services into YOS with peace of mind. Yahoo recognizes that a lot of security considerations have to be made if such organizations are going to open up for data interflow.
- 12:34pm – Patel: “the number of user accounts people have is ballooning out of control”. Yahoo wants to be the starting point for all of these accounts and to create an engaging experience for all of them.
- 12:36pm – Yahoo’s attitude seems to be much like Facebook’s when it launched its app platform. The company realizes there’s a lot that can be done with its data but it doesn’t want to be the one that builds all the possible apps around the data, especially when it involves countless third party services (it’s like the anti-communism argument: the state can’t control everything and know exactly what people want, so leave it to the market).
- 12:38pm – Rossiter is now turning his attention to the relationships people have, which is centered around the address book. The most important people in your address book are those who you actually have a relationship with. So you need a way to create a social graph out of this data. The key part of doing this is a technology called “Yahoo Activator”, which ties together Mail, Messenger, Gmail, Hotmail, Suggestion List, and your address book, using them all to determine who matter to you. The result is a ranked list of people as well as a list of suggested friends. Knowing that people contact each other in multiple ways (email, IM, etc) helps to determine who matters. Yahoo can then set user preferences that share certain information with people who matter to you (such as, share only photo uploads that have been deemed important to you). This is a new way to build a social graph. Previously, email spamming has been used heavily by others.
- 12:43pm – Even though there are 273 million Yahoo mail users, lots of times you’re communicating with people who don’t use Yahoo mail. This system takes that fact into consideration and let’s outside users get involved with YOS. This activator technology is going to be put in front of several Yahoo properties, such as mail and IM. The hope is that the activator will get you set up in a very short amount of time.
- 12:44pm – This activator technology will also help users handle the overload of emails they might get by filtering, labeling and categorizing messages that come from people who matter to you. You’ll also get a Xobni-like context for each email contact, showing you the history of your interactions with them. This is coming very soon. The activator is live in profiles as of last week, and it will go live in Mail as one of the first big pieces (not giving specific date but within next few months).
- 12:52pm – Now discussing permissions and privacy concerns. Two parts to this: 1) who are my connections and 2) what data do I share with them. The choice and type of relationship is important. Data is shared with your “connections” not with your address book contacts or randoms. Also, the data that users explicitly put into Yahoo is their data; they own it. Yahoo places controls around spam (especially with regards to invites) and, as mentioned previously, leveraged oAuth. Yahoo wants to go with whatever is industry-compatible, isn’t necessarily wed to oAuth it seems.
- 12:55pm – Cody Simms is now on stage to talk about data updates. Yahoo will let developers present their users with notifications that let them share their data back to Yahoo. For example, if their uploading photos off network, they can choose to send those photos to Flickr as well. The same goes for activity that occurs on sites like Flickr, Yahoo Music, message boards, Digg, or Facebook. Yahoo wants to provide a two-way updates platform that also pushes data updates back out to other services. So if someone does something on Digg, Yahoo can then inform a site like CNN of that action. It’s like Facebook Beacon but it doesn’t just drive data to Yahoo, it also syndicates data out to any number of sites. Also, it supports not just status-like messages but large data pushes (images, etc). All of the permission controls apply to these updates as well.
- 1:04pm – Rossiter is back to tak about the Application Platform (finally?). It will provide 3 primary discovery mecanisms: invites, updates, and gallery. Applications can be installed by users in many places across Yahoo. Each app has 2 views – small and large. Furthermore, the view is customized depending on where it’s placed (in search, in mail, on the front page, etc).
- 1:07pm – Number of different programming models. Open Social is one. It’s backed by something called eYML that allows apps to run in high performance and secure environments. It will eventually be made available to the open source community.
- 1:09pm – After briefer-than-expected discussion on app platform, now talking about Yahoo Query Language (YQL), which “looks just like SQL”. Provides access to data from rest of the web. YQL is intended to do the heavy lifting for developers when community with a variety of APIs.
- 1:15p – Last year has been all about building the platform, the next will be all about building products on top of it. This will involve getting Yahoo users to start making connections and building out their social graph. And it will involve placing “update consumption points” where users start acting socially. The profile piece from last week is an important one but not a destination. Instant Messenger 9 is a place where Yahoo is driving “activations” of the social graph; Mail and the homepage will be increasingly important in this regard over the next few months. Much of it is about giving users choice.
- 1:18pm – Applications will come to My Yahoo, allowing users to customize it much more. Search has search monkey already. Mail will get applications that let you extend its capabilities, as will the frontpage.
- 1:19pm – Hooks will be placed at all the consumption and production places around Yahoo (music, news, sports, movies, etc) that encourage users to engage in social behavior
- Next week: Yahoo Application Platform, all social APIs, updates platform, YQL
- Next week developers will have a sandbox area where they can start developing their apps and share them with their connections. There won’t be any gallery yet, and they won’t actually be able to push these out onto any Yahoo sites — both of those steps come later, after Yahoo has let the platform “bake” a bit..
- Both instant messenger and profiles now have Facebook feed-like areas where you can see updates. Later on, these will be added to different places as well (homepage, etc).
- 1:37pm – Presentation is now done. We’ll upload slides from the event once we get them.
I a very excited to see what they do. I think Yahoo actually has all the right tools to be very disruptive in the open space, let see if the team can pull it off!
I feel the same way. I’m excited to see what this ends up looking like. It seems the possibilities are endless.
I will continue to support Yahoo
I like the Yahoo e-mail features & also the home page & the feature news.
this system will not patch the hole in yeehaws share price. no body wants to build another profile on yahoo. premium open social means pasting an existing one profile into another with one click.
most valuable what baffles me is why they dont use patent 360 the same way googl does (ease of use and syndication). maybe they should offer the 360 search patent to developers and watch what happens. they dont have alot too lose at this point.
OpenLocator
Is this like Facebook platform?? If that is the case, then considering Yahoo’s user base, I am pretty sure it will be an instant hit among web developers! rock on..yahoo!
http://www.livbit.com
Preview preview preview, then launch half assed 18-24months later.
Yawn.
Wake me when, I mean if, it ever launches.
Read the article. It launches next week..
Nah. Don’t believe the hype.
Good that they’re getting some of their people out in public, might help them land the job they all dream of at Facebook.
A live video stream?
I’ve been hearing about this Univeral Profile System since Yahoo decided to shutter 360 over a year ago. Since then, whatever is left of Yahoo’s management has been running around like a headless chicken trying figure out how to hold off Microsoft and keep shareholders happy.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
I hope they allow something with their fantasy sports, it would be really helpful.
IMHO, I don’t think that their open source application platform will make as much of a splash as they are hoping. Like Brian said, they are really going to have to focus on their main user base in order for them to really get off the ground with this thing.
This is moronic–nobody is going to create a Yahoo profile. Classic yahoo, no clue about users.
we have a winna!
maybe useful for older people, but facebook does this already for the under-30 crowd. millennials don’t keep an updated address book. that’s what fb is for.
they’ve taken good ideas from both facebook and google and left them half-baked. why limit the app platform to widgets? why not enable full-blown websites like app engine? if they’re strategy is open, then open up your servers to devs and let them decide what format their apps should be presented in.
The “Oprah” story has more activity than the Yahoo story.
Nuff said.
just keep the information coming, and however it is we will be able to ‘transiton’ our 360 stuff. hope the iceberg doesn’t melt by then.
I’m excited, but not sure how successful this will be. They’re trying to turn Yahoo into a social site, but as we’ve seen this in the past and that hasn’t worked. We’ll see if this “open” initiative can bring in developers who can create something worth while. Seems like Yahoo meets Facebook, but most people on the web already have a Facebook, why do they need a Yahoo?
Primarily because an awful lot of people already do have a Yahoo! (hint: Y! Mail is still world’s most popular free email service) – and they may get social features (or sort-of social features) without even leaving their Y! inbox.
perfect example of a company focusing 99.9% on internal issues/politics, with .01% going towards users.
I’d bet this kinda shit gets a lot of pats on the back internally, but will do next to nothing to move the needle outside of the Yahoo-plex.
Yahoo the first large scale directory of the Internet.which is at the peak of success.its great that they are looking for more up grades as users require.
While I am hoping this will be a success for yahoo I would not bet on it for a few reasons:
1) talent: the team executing on this is a shell of its former self. lots of battlefield promotions as talent from this team has jumped ship.
2) monetization: developers want monetization opportunities and if they don’t have them — they likely won’t come or will leave very quickly evidence — facebook.
3) do users care: there are some scenarios where social would be interesting e.g. mailbox, calendar, etc. — but beyond that think you need to be careful about how annoying some of these social feeds/alerts can quickly become — they become very tired very quickly.
yahoo calendar ???
where is it deliver on it and CalDAV
integrate banking and bill payment and you might get somewhere !
regards
John Jones
I don’t think anybody we’ll be ever able to integrate banking into their products – banks tend to be over-cautious about providing access to third parties (and this is understandable indeed).
Read “we’ll be able” as “will be able” of course
Pretty much sure that all Yahoo! efforts will result in significantly better user experience. Too bad that investors do not want good results in future, but want some good results right now – otherwise “Short YHOO!”. I think it contradicts to common sense as well as definition of investments
Great stuff from a great company suffering from a bad time … question is if investors/market will give jerry & team enough time for these efforts to bear fruits ?
http://www.confiz.com
Why isn’t anyone addressing the buyout of Rhapsody from Yahoo(gong long ago yahoo lovers)I have talked to many of my friends at Rhapsody and all they want is the music portion of yahoo and said that the rest will be there words”In pieces” in other words it will finally be gone, unless a very wealthy person or corp pays for name. Im sicken to see many leave from my 1st time on in o2 also working and having lunch with the real x yahoo. Please stop all this just so no one dares lose any money from it all. Its sick at youtubes since GATES came on, morale is shot, things are one mess after another with his new invention. My ? is why the need to work GATES, and to live in some bomb shelter where I lived yrs ago, near the radiataion plant in a city close by, please dont dare say its shut down thats just like gov always tells you xcept I did work at LLR lad in livermore where they are still making bombs, we never got our badges checked for radiation oh well just some FYI, never believe any what you read and 1/2 of what you see in person, sorry to any who got hurt by many selfish jerks who claim all the hype bout this new system on 360 its one mess, oh but 1st it was going to be Mash, then all fled there then it was going to be like Mulitipy lol next its on on on why just let others know that its time to find far to many now into this networking game, with many site offering alot more, oh well guess you may want to have a lol the 360 forum is either low IQ or is still in dream land and we got the slam now whos lol I didnt bother to even post back from last Aug when I tried to tell them this would happen, well now all are closing up and opening their own web site (hey good idea since it was mine):) no hard feelings its the way you all want a bit of the green stuff and lets see you bail out yahoo now;0)have a great weekend cya at just about any place anyone can blog:) bye for now till we meet again on ????hugs to all no hard feelings:)Only that since you or whoever let Vietnam do our work and we have so many out is why USA is going broke, Rest our case thanks for the memories when Yahoo was a great company.
Why isn’t anyone addressing the buyout of Rhapsody from Yahoo(gong long ago yahoo lovers)I have talked to many of my friends at Rhapsody and all they want is the music portion of yahoo and said that the rest will be there words”In pieces” in other words it will finally be gone, unless a very wealthy person or corp pays for name. Im sicken to see many leave from my 1st time on in o2 also working and having lunch with the real x yahoo. Please stop all this just so no one dares lose any money from it all. Its sick at youtubes since GATES came on, morale is shot, things are one mess after another with his new invention. My ? is why the need to work GATES, and to live in some bomb shelter where I lived yrs ago, near the radiataion plant in a city close by, please dont dare say its shut down thats just like gov always tells you xcept I did work at LLR lad in livermore where they are still making bombs, we never got our badges checked for radiation oh well just some FYI, never believe any what you read and 1/2 of what you see in person, sorry to any who got hurt by many selfish jerks who claim all the hype bout this new system on 360 its one mess, oh but 1st it was going to be Mash, then all fled there then it was going to be like Mulitipy lol next its on on on why just let others know that its time to find far to many now into this networking game, with many site offering alot more, oh well guess you may want to have a lol the 360 forum is either low IQ or is still in dream land and we got the slam now whos lol I didnt bother to even post back from last Aug when I tried to tell them this would happen, well now all are closing up and opening their own web site (hey good idea since it was mine):) no hard feelings its the way you all want a bit of the green stuff and lets see you bail out yahoo now;0)have a great weekend cya at just about any place anyone can blog:) bye for now till we meet again on ????hugs to all no hard feelings:)Only that since you or whoever let Vietnam do our work and we have so many out is why USA is going broke, Rest our case thanks for the memories when Yahoo was a great company.
Perhaps all of you should take a look at what the Yahoo USERS have to say about all this. They are up in arms by the tens of thousands, and they are voting with their feet. The use of Yahoo Messenger has almost completely collapsed in the short span of two weeks since the arrogant dump of all USERS information.
Take a few minutes and read the posts left by Yahoo USERS. It tells the story completely. There are thousands of posts by angry USERS, and thousands of other posts have been deleted. They DO NOT want to be part of some super-linked, integrated-banking, social-feed, open source/closed source, Universal Profiled, CalDAV-itized, user experience.
Like my 80 year old dad said regarding Starbucks, “I don’t want a ‘coffee experience,’ I just want a cup of coffee.”
Yahoo is building the Emerald City, but there will be no residents.
“Perhaps all of you should take a look at what the Yahoo USERS have to say about all this. They are up in arms by the tens of thousands, and they are voting with their feet.”
Do you really they are capable of lustening after they have ignored us all,(and for how long)?
No. Not gonna happen.
Yahoo needs a “great and powerful” that Toto cannot pull the gossamer curtain to expose anything on…
XOXO
Anne
sex