Yahoo! opens up for future

Yahoo! is putting it's faith in openness to attract more users to its online services and ultimately generate more revenue.

One of the ways in which Yahoo! promotes its open strategy are regular Hack Days, the eighth of which was held in London last weekend.

The events bring together several hundred developers who have 24 hours to create new applications using APIs from Yahoo! and others organisations such as the BBC.

The winning hack this year was Open FreeCycle which makes the online recycling community Freecycle searchable using the Yahoo Mail API, the Yahoo! Pipes feed aggregator and geo-location technology.

The company has been running the Yahoo! Developer Network (YDN) since 2005 and launched its application platform towards the end of 2008.

This year Yahoo! is aiming to "rewire" itself to link together its online applications, according to senior director of product management for Yahoo! Open Strategy, Cody Simms.

Simms said: "We're taking our top products and putting them on this platform. We think it's a nice ecosystem we're founding."

He said that currently, Yahoo! users spend on average 7.6 per cent of their online time on Yahoo.com but the company wants to increase user engagement.

International head of YDN, Sophie Major, explained: "Yahoo! makes money by page views and anything that we do that drives user engagement on our website is directly monitisable for us. We're incredibly committed to this as a commercial approach," she added.

Simms said the company also wants to increase the "social dimension" across Yahoo! so friends can share their activities, driving traffic to other parts of the site. An example of this is if a user uses Yahoo! Buzz service to highlight an article, their Yahoo! contacts will receive an update saying they've done this which also provides a link to the content.

Alternatively, if a user poses a question to Yahoo! Answers, people in their network will be able to see that question and either see the answers or post one themselves.

Simms said: "We want to enable users to find the best of the web on Yahoo! It's not just about us opening up our APIs, it's about making the experience better on Yahoo.com."

Since Yahoo! first made application programming interfaces (APIs) available in 2005, more than 250,000 API keys have been issued to developers wanting to use the technology. Early in 2008 the company tripled the resources devoted to this part of the business.

Other online tools that have been introduced by Yahoo! include a Java script library, a search API called Boss (build your own search service) and Yahoo! Query Language.

The application platform is also open for third parties to develop applications providing Yahoo! with opportunities to work with developers and content creators to monitise the services.

Simms described the platform as, "a way for anyone to come and park their boat in the harbour".

Also speaking in London, Yahoo! co-founder, David Filo, said: "Open has kind of been at the core, part of the DNA of Yahoo!, for a very long time."

"When we do make acquisitions it's going to make it that much easier to plug them into our infrastructure," he added.