I am at the Web 2 Expo and will have a lot more to say about this once the weekend comes, when I have time to think out loud. But for now, the news:
Yahoo Inc. is swinging the doors of its Web platforms wide open to let outside developers create applications across its network of sites, as well as radically stitching together its online services under the social profile concept.
The idea is to let the hundreds of millions of people who use its Web mail, instant messaging, calendar, photo management and other online services replicate the social experience that social networks like MySpace and Facebook have made so popular.
What that piece (from IDG) misses is the open search angle. This to me is where the real play is. TC gets it:
Yahoo is letting a limited number of beta testers into its SearchMonkey developer platform, a service announced in February that allows site owners to customize their Yahoo search result listings. (Although it does not allow them to change the ranking of results—which would be really radical).
In my humble opinion, Yahoo MUST get radical. And it will, I’d warrant, if it MSFT does not get in the way.
Yahoo hosts my domain and has for five years. Last October when I decided my biz needed a blog, I naturally went first to see what yahoo offered me. Well, 360* was very limited and the use of html was too, to the point where last week I decided to move my blog to Blogger. Yahoo needs to make some changes and some serious ones or the next thing I will be looking for is new hosting. The one thing I can say is that their customer service is great and always responds quickly to help resolve problems. Their services are just limited…we’ll see.