Date: 04-28-2008
Yahoo has announced that it is opening up its platform to third-party developers, a move that comes on the heels of similar moves by its rivals Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. Sources state that the Sunnyvale, California, company is taking radical steps to improve its services under the social profile concept. Version 1.0 of the open-source platform, which is being called Y!Open, is slated to be released at some point later this year, according to media sources. It will include a development environment for several properties, a social “activator” and graph engine, an events engine, and a single profile for users, according to Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh. “We’re literally in the process of rewiring Yahoo from the inside out to create a developer platform that will open up assets of Yahoo,” Balogh said. The first property to go live will be Yahoo Search. “There’s a massive, latent social network within Yahoo, and we’re going to bring it to the surface,” said Neil Sample, chief architect of platforms at Yahoo Inc.
