Sunnyvale (CA) - Yahoo has been taking steps in to open its platform to the developer community for some time now. Today, the Yahoo! Open Strategy (Y!OS) team opened their doors to a completely rewired Yahoo that allows developers access to both the Yahoo network and all of the social data.

These efforts were shared a few weeks ago at the Web 3.0 conference, but the formal launch gives us a better understanding of what can be expected from this move. For developers, this means that Yahoo is now allowing them to leverage the content, the traffic and Yahoo’s user base in an attempt to increase their web presence.

"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," Yahoo said in a statement.

Developers will have access to the Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP), Yahoo! Social Platform (YSP), and Yahoo! Query Language (YQL), which is a proprietary query language. These services can all be accessed utilizing OAuth, a standard protocol for authentication.

Yahoo hopes to benefit from the same “open API” strategies that have aided Web 2.0 startups in their quest for survival in the new open era of computing. Because of their acquisitions of Delicio.us, Flickr, MyBlogLog, and Upcoming, Yahoo should have all the Web 2.0 talent they need.

That certainly some developer support!

Oct 29, 2008 19:45     

That certainly some developer support!
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