I just listened to a fascinating keynote from Cody Simms of Yahoo at Widget Summit about the just launched Y!OS / Yahoo! Platform.
Over the next couple of weeks, Yahoo! is going to attempt to map its own social graph based on the billions of data points (address books, IM activity, email activity) collected by its property. My take is that this will be an implicit mapping effort of a scale that has not yet been seen on the web.
Here are my real time notes - please forgive typos, misspellings, and things that don't make sense.
Cody Simms (Yahoo! Operating System)
Y!OS
Broad sweeping effort to platformize Yahoo.
It's new, just one week old
Goals:
Establish a social dimension - horizontal aggregated social experience
Previously, Y! was vertical. A social destination. We want horizontal social across properties.
Open means:
- Open data. Everything available as APIs.
- Open User Interface. Ability to deploy widgets into Yahoo properties, Charter member of OpenSocial
- OpenSource and Open Standards
3) Rewire Yahoo. Traditionally, Y! has been very editorial driven. Rewiring this aspect.
The Social Dimension:
Let users have one identity, one set of relationships across Yahoo! properties. If you are in Yahoo! Sports and have friends, you can access the same people in Yahoo! news.
APIs - social directory, profile API. Who I am, and who am i connected to.
Rewiring - content shared from around the Web.
Two sides of the coin - Yahoo! content pushed out to the web, web's content pulled into Yahoo!.
Platforms
Y! built a totally new platform layer. Built on cloud infrastructure that will also be opened up and made available.
APIs:
Social API - user data, connection data
Update API - Read and Write, what a user is doing at a given time, publish to Yahoo, or from Yahoo
Status API - update to Yahoo' a status
Contacts API - address book
Built on oAuth
Application profile - how third parties build apps that run in data. You can deploy full page apps into Yahoo. Already live. The widget view (small view) will be added over the next month or so.
Web Services: YQL - access to lots of data, mash it together, and pull data out. Query for data from APIs across the web.
Yahoo Developer Network. Choose what you want:
YQL - mashing and accessing data
App Platform
Social Platform
Infrastructure
links:
developer.yahoo.com
The Social Platform:
Build a central identity model across Yahoo.
Yahoo has been consolidating identity across properties - mail, address book, flickr, delicious, answers, etc. Yahoo ID has been translated to a GUID. Developer calls GUID, Y! tells you which properties they use.
Y! i using this identity system internally now.
Next step is to associate third party identities - Twitter, Ebay, CNN, GMAil, etc.
Then: Distribution - any data that user puts into system is theirs, and they own it. Contacts, updates - Oauth is used.
Use Case:
User is shopping on AMazon. Want to send something to sister. Amazon asks if you want to access address from Yahoo address book. Oauth permission used to protect data.
Address book is a one way connection. Reciprocal address book is a connection.
Yahoo has a latent social network - 10B relationship pointers in yahoo - email, address book, IM, etc. Yahoo! ranks the connections based on activity. Recommend friends this way. This is live in the new Yahoo Profile, but is coming soon to the front page of mail. Y! expects to very quickly build out a graph.
User has granular control over what's public - nickname and photo icon are required to be public, everything else is controlled by user.
You set shared activities that gets shared to folks that you have a two way relationship with.
Users can choose to share data with third party developers, like the Amazon use case.
Three levels of data in Yahoo:
Public
Shared - accessible by folks with two way connections.
Private
Updates
Three levels:
Collect
Filter
Display
Users creating content around the web. Any site on the web can tag an activity with (do you want to share this activity with Yahoo! Updates). If yes, activity gets syndicated into updates platform. Output on Profile, coming soon to Mail, MyYahoo, and front page of Yahoo.
Application Platform (YAP)
Technologies:
YML (enables some tags)
Caja (rewrite javascript)
OAUTH
Implementation Models:
Server Side
Browser Side (opensocial, javascript)
Browser Side (Flash)
Can write full view apps today, small view (widgets) coming
Now is more of a sandbox mode. But you can write updates to Messenger base...
SearchMonkey lets you deploy apps into yahoo search. App shows up in context if search results are relevant.
OpenMail lets you deploy apps into Yahoo Inboxes. Example, with permission, the app scans inbox for photo and creates a photo album in mail box. Not here yet, but coming.
How are apps discovered?
Gallery. Each property will have a gallery. Single digit percentage of users will use this method.
Updates. "Bill rated Shawshank Redemption on RateItAll."
Invites. Explicity sharing via mail or so.
YQL
Enables command line access to data from across the web.
Can query data from across web via Y! Pipes.
Example: I want to see the flickr photos that someone has uploaded, or the music someone has rated.
Y!OS / Yahoo! Synergy
Y! has a massive user base and bunch of awesome, but disparate, properties.
Y! is different because of unified identities across properties, allowing you to connect across the web, activity updates across the web, and enabling all of it through open data access.
Roadmap:
Activating users
Building out consumption points (coming soon to front page and Yahoo! mail)
Choice - where you can push apps to: MyYahoo coming soon, Yahoo! Mail coming soon
Users will pay attention from day one because Yahoo! properties are on board.
