Yahoo has officially opened its platform to developers. It’s all part of the search company’s vision for a more open Yahoo that leverages outside innovation, unlocks the power of social networking, and meshes the Yahoo experience with other sites to bring viewers the best of the Web.
That’s the vision. And Yahoo has taken one more step toward it by making its tools and data available to developers to build applications for a more customized network.
According to Jay Rossiter, senior vice president of Yahoo Open Strategy, the most obvious impact will be the social aspects. At a high level, he said, Yahoo is 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 connections 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,” Rossiter wrote on the corporate blog. “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.”
Unlimited Potential?
According to Yahoo, there’s really no limit to the potential. The company offered a few examples, such as sharing updates and discovering new things online. Basically, Yahoo is letting developers centralize anything you do on the Web as an update for its platform, with user permission.
“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, movies they’ve…