Developers Mixed on Yahoo!’s Open Strategy

By John Greaves

Yahoo! has unveiled its Open Strategy to mixed reviews. The strategy, which is designed to fit in with Yahoo!’s commitment to make its platform more social, is meant to make it easier for developers to build. According to the Y!OS introduction on the Yahoo! Developers Network Blog, “Through YOS, we’re rewiring Yahoo! so that developers can tap into benefits once only available within Yahoo! Namely, you can leverage the content, traffic and user base of Yahoo! to extend your presence on the Web.

According to Sandeep Mundra, whose company IndiaNIC has developed for Yahoo! since 2001, although IndiaNIC is not exclusive to Yahoo! they feel they get the best deal from Yahoo! and they are open to possibilities presented by Y!OS. “It’s very exciting and from this Open Strategy we probably link different kind of models available on the Yahoo! Developer Network to not only on the Yahoo! site but other sites as well. And they’re giving the easy interface so for a developer it’s very exciting,” Mundra says.

However, other developers say they are unimpressed with Yahoo!’s moves so far. Phil Michaelson a developer whose list building and sharing product KartMe builds on Amazon, Google and eBay says Yahoo! needs to do more loosening of restrictions.

“I’d looked at using some of their APIs (e.g., search monkey and Yahoo BOSS) about a year ago. At the time, they didn’t give the end user enough control over how to display data. Now as I review the terms, they’re too restrictive. Offering APIs does not make your service open,” Michaelson says.

A quick visit to the Yahoo! Developer Network blog reveals on the one hand a lot of exciting information from Yahoo! about various innovations such as The Yahoo! Applications Platform that “represents the first time that Yahoo! is opening up the “canvas” of Yahoo! to developers, allowing developers to easily author and publish apps across the Yahoo! network,” reading responses to comments on the potential shut down of MyBlogLog shows the anger and confusion some developers feel.

The potential shutdown of MyBlogLog is not an isolated event. According to blogger MG Siegler, “At a time when many tech companies are starting to launch new projects again and excitement is building, Yahoo keeps shutting things down.”

Mundra says he is concerned over one shutdown in particular. The Shopping API is scheduled to be discontinued as of March 11, in favor of Yahoo! partnership with PriceGrabber.

“That’s a question asked by my clients because my Yahoo! clients storefronts are using 100% Yahoo!-owned shopping engines and from the shopping engines most the clients are getting very good leads. Moving that shopping engine to Price Grabber I think is a very, very hard decision so we’ll need to work very hard on that.” Many developers like IndiaNIC will be hard hit by this because unlike Yahoo! Price Grabber doesn’t offer a free web services API. The YDN advises developers “If you wish to continue to display syndicated shopping results for products listed on Yahoo! Shopping, you must apply to Price Grabber for shopping syndication services. Although they do not offer a free web services API, you can find out more about how to apply to their program here.”

One thing that may allay developers’ fears is a promise by Neal Sample, vice president of Yahoo! Open Strategy: “How we are determining which APIs we support on the Yahoo! Developer Network.” Sample also promises to give more information on progress on the Yahoo! Query Language, Yahoo! Application Platform and Social APIs.

Despite these concerns, Mundra indicates his company will stick with Yahoo! both because he believes the company’s new social focus is good for business and because he likes how the platform compares to other available outlets.

“In the last couple of years social media marketing is buzzing the market and we’re getting a lot more clients who want to integrate it into their store, so with the Open Strategy it’s going to shorten our development time.”

Still Mundra says he would like to have better communication. “Yahoo!’s support is very good but we need more support and better communication from them regarding what development is going on so we can always ready ourselves with marketing and get support ready on that. We don’t want surprises,” Mundra says.

While Yahoo! may be able to rely on the loyalty of companies such as IndiaNIC to attract developers away from competitors, Michaelson says the company has to send a signal that it is willing to make moves to allow them freedom to profit.

“Yahoo’s restrictions on data display and service monetization lead me to conclude they’re not serious about being open. If they were serious, they’d just set a cap on traffic,” Michaelson says. “No need to prevent development from sites that are trying to innovate. They should let partners innovate, and once partners are succeeding, then look to profit.”

Sample says about the Y!OS, “One thing to note today: Yahoo!’s commitment to openness is reflected in the design of recent platform releases. That is right. The truth is in the architecture. Our Open platforms (YAP, YQL, YUI, etc.) will stay and will stay open. YQL technology offers all developers an open, scalable, plug-and-play platform with the same flexibility and security we require for our own production deployment. You have the ability to wire up alternative APIs using YQL’s Open Tables. Now that’s a commitment.”

YahooTV: Paving the Way to an Open IPTV?

By Sheila Shayon

IPTV is spreading, slowly, across the globe. By year end 2009 the universe of homes that were receiving IPTV services was 26 million. By year end 2014 that number is expected to reach 70 million worldwide.

The greatest growth in IPTV is in countries with established high-speed Internet technologies including the Netherlands, South Korea, Hong Kong and France. As technology progresses, still developing countries like China will catch up quickly in subscription numbers.

Dashboard widgets first hit the market with Mac OS X Tiger. They are very small applets designed to convey quick bites of information or a quick change of setting. Some familiar forms of widgets include clocks, event countdowns, auction-tickers, stock market tickers, flight arrival information, daily weather. A.k.a. gadget, badge, module, webjit, capsule, snippet, mini and flake, Web widgets most often use Adobe Flash.

Last year, Yahoo made the bold promise that Internet TV widgets would be the major phenomenon of the year. Launched as Connected TV in 2009, Internet-enabled widgets allow viewers with compatible TVs to access Twitter, Facebook and certain news feeds.

That prediction did not materialize, but Yahoo has now upped the ante and launched a new TV widget chip ready for installation in set-top boxes. Having entered into a deal with chip manufacturers MIPS and Sigma, Yahoo widgets can now be installed in a range of hardware. Yahoo widgets enable Internet-connected TVs access to online video with one or two clicks on the remote. The widgets show up as snippets in a “dock” at the bottom of the TV screen or via a widget directory in a panel at the left of the screen.

Yahoo’s latest partners include: Netflix, VUDU, Amazon VOD, Showtime, CBS, CinemaNow/Blockbuster and video catalogs from FrameChannel, Brightcove, Zinc and 1Cast. Previously available only on newly manufactured HDTVs, a new device that will carry Yahoo widgets was introduced at CES: the ViewSonic media server, VMP80. Yahoo’s Widget development kit is now publicly available.

It seems as if Internet-ready TV manufacturers are no longer controlling the Web-surfing experience — and Yahoo has opened the doors.

Sheila Shayon is president/founder of Third Eye Media, third-eyemedia.com, multimedia production with core competencies in broadband production, creative design and execution, and social media. Shayon has several decades of multimedia experience working for companies like Time Warner Cable and Home Box Office.

Yahoo! Moves Ahead With Y!OS

By Barbara Gengler

As Yahoo! moves forward to deliver open, industry-leading platforms to developers and publishers, the company is advancing its Open Strategy (Y!OS), allowing third-party applications to plug into services like Yahoo Mail.

The Y!OS also looks to fit together the Yahoo! experience with the best online content and services as it offers developers an open, scalable, plug-and-play platform along with the ability to wire up alternative APIs using Y!OS components such as Yahoo! Query Language, for querying and manipulating data from Yahoo and other sources.

Cody Simms, senior director of product management for Y!OS, says APIs are core to the company’s business and Yahoo! is heavily invested, but he declined to comment right now on future APIs.

He did point out, however, that developers are interested in syndicating their applications to Yahoo’s users around the world and that some enjoy Y!OS Query Language (YQL) service, for example, because it is a very powerful data access tool that makes developers lives easier.

“Y!OS is attractive for many reasons, certainly traffic from the Y!OS network is one and also the developer convenience and ease of use of tools is another big plus,” Simms says.

At the heart of Y!OS are complementary platforms that allow developers to access Yahoo! network data and develop applications by using an open authentication standard.

The Yahoo! Query Language (YQL) enables developers to access data from any source on the Internet. It is a single endpoint that allows developers to query, filter and combine data across Yahoo! and external sources such as RSS feeds or HTML pages.

The Y!OS Application Platform (YAP) provides multiple options for developing applications, including JavaScript, server-side hosted and Flash-based applications, which can be used not only on the Yahoo! network through YAP but also can be used off-network as data for socially aware applications. It consists of software and services that enable developers to build Web applications that are available throughout Yahoo!

What’s more, Yahoo! has opened up the ability for developer applications to reach more people through Yahoo! Social Platform (YSP), which allows developers to write applications right into Yahoo Mail and Yahoo’s home page is customizable with users able to add applications. The YSP can be used on the Yahoo! network through YAP as well as off-network as data for developers socially aware applications.

“In summary Y!OS is about delivering on three main components: rewiring Yahoo! on a platform foundation; opening Yahoo which includes open standards and data and infusing the social element throughout,” Simms says.

Yahoo! is working with developers that include Mint.com, personal financial developers; SNOOTH, a social network, recommendation engine and shopping site that revolves around wine and a number of publishers where Y!OS is included in their offerings, such as Disqus (global comment system), JS-KIT (next generation commenting systems) and JanRain (which provides OpenID solutions for businesses and end consumers) in services that provide social sharing and multiple logins.

SNOOTH, in partnership with MyRecipes.com, recently created the A-Z Wine Pairing application to help users of the new Yahoo! homepage and My Yahoo! find perfect wine pairings for more than 30,000 recipes.

And Mint.com launched Budget, a new application that helps users of the Yahoo! homepage and My Yahoo! stay on top of their budgets, track spending and get personalized alerts in one secure place.

According to Mint.com, the openness of the Yahoo! platform allowed the company to build a version of its product that “helps ensure everyone has access to a clear picture of their financial standing.”

One of Yahoo’s early developers, Gigya, integrated the YAP into its technology and user interface, allowing the company’s users to collect their favorite widgets. Yahoo! users who save widgets from Gigya publishers will be able to view those widgets as thumbnails displayed in the “Widget Wall” application on their My Yahoo! page.

Yahoo’s Simms says partners like Gigya are important to the success of YAP as Gigya provides a content syndication infrastructure that enables Yahoo! users to bring more content from across the Web into their Yahoo! experience.

Exclusive Content No More: IPTV Free Market Opens Floodgates

By John Greaves

Exclusivity in IPTV was once standard industry practice. Device manufacturers could differentiate themselves from their competition a la the Xbox 360 deal with Netflix and people who purchased a device were potential customers for content producers. “Content companies traditionally made money by controlling distribution,” says Rob Green, senior vice president of business development for Imagine Communications, which serves the traditional HDTV and SDTV digital broadcast markets as well as emerging areas such as VOD, Internet Video and IPTV. “In the past you had to sit in front of the TV, you had to buy newspapers to get news. Companies tried to continue this model because it’s very profitable.”

However, the free market abhors exclusivity. FierceIPTV recently reported that French Telecom’s Orange has been given the thumbs down because of its anti-competition approach to on-demand content. It’s debatable how that affects the U.S. market but indicators show companies are copying Netflix’s decision to court both Microsoft and Sony.

This isn’t necessarily bad for the consumer or for business. Boxee, which is currently the only open source platform of its kind, has been very successful with the open model and according to Andrew Kippen, vice president of marketing, feels no pressure to revert to the traditional approach. “You’re able to get much more content to your users and much more quickly. Certainly we do have agreements with providers like Netflix, Pandora and Major League Baseball to access their content on Boxee, but what we’re able to do is bring in content from smaller independent sites [that] also have great content,” Kippen says.

Although Boxee has chosen complete openness, Green says the immediate future will feature either short-term exclusive agreements or what he calls licensing agreements.

“You have WiMax, cable boxes, modems, IPTV, DSL - so many of these network types and they all need content. Content companies have started to do far less exclusive agreements and far more licensing agreements for different devices. If you do see exclusivity it’s usually a short-term agreement almost from a promotional standpoint,” Green says.

These short-term agreements and licensing agreements can lead to intricate relationships among the industry players. For example, Amazon is the exclusive supplier of the Moxi HD DVR. Amazon also provides its video-on-demand service to Yahoo-equipped TVs made by various manufacturers. Yahoo, meanwhile, has also announced it will make BrightCove available on Yahoo-connected TVs, which compete with Roku and Boxee. Amazon the retailer competes with Wal-Mart, which is buying Vudu — a similar business to Boxee (but is more of a video rental entity).

Insiders say this is simply the free market operating the way it should in response to market pressure. “People are trying to cram functionality into devices without increasing cost. I’m a big believer that we’re going to end up in the space where everyone will have access to the same content,” says Keith Kocho, president and founder of ExtendMedia, which provides services that enable content providers and distributors to create, deliver, manage and monetize online content offerings over many devices. “I think when you turn your device on there should be any number of icons,” Kocho says.

Kippen agrees. “The goal for us is to be the OS that runs your living room whether we’re on a TV, set top box, or game console; we want to work with all those manufacturers. We want you to be able to buy a Sony TV and have Boxee installed on it,” he says.

According to Kocho, the trend is toward a market where price and value to the consumer will be how companies set themselves apart. “How you present a search engine and user interface to enable the user to find what they want, bundling content and what you have to offer from a price point and how it can be delivered to other devices you have will be critical to help users differentiate between your service and others,” Kocho says.

Providers will likely differ on how to accomplish this due to cost and the need to protect their intellectual property. “Most of these projects are proprietary so what Google and Yahoo are doing is different than what Boxee is doing,” Kocho adds.

Industry experts predict the two hotly contested areas will be consumer living rooms and mobile devices with monetization at the heart of what providers offer and how.

“I suspect that’s what’s going to happen is all of these guys want to aggregate the user experience in the living room and they will want to bill for it. They’ll want to upgrade the customer from what is a free service where they don’t have much participation in advertising revenue to a premium content,” Kocho says.

An early example of this is Boxee’s new payment platform that will enable users to purchase content online. Kippen says Boxee plans to pay for this by collecting a percentage of the payment for content. This is in addition to its planned offering that will attempt to link social networks with television viewership. “We’re building a new feature so you can pull information from social networks in to Boxee. You will be able to come home and see what your friends are doing on your TV,” he says.

Despite the furor over streaming content, Kocho cautions that no one should write off traditional providers. “I think the main thing from a strategy point is I don’t think anyone is going to wake up tomorrow and cancel their cable subscription, there’s a whole lot of technical reasons that won’t happen, but we’ll see companies like Boxee and Netflix start to erode that,” Kocho says.

Green agrees. “I think consumers want the content they want, how they want, where they want it. What system that delivers that [content] I don’t think they care - whether it’s streamed or pre packaged in devices. The trend is that there will be more avenues, more devices and more opportunities to get content,” he says.

Top Mobile Phones, Sites and Brands for 2009

By: blog.nielsen.com

The iPhone and various Blackberry handhelds dominated the mobile device market, while Google, Yahoo! and YouTube led the way as far as most accessed sites and brands on the mobile web.

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How a Search Engine May Choose Search Snippets

By: seobythesea.com

When you search at Google or Yahoo or Bing, you’ll see a set of search results that include a page title, a summary or snippet of the page, and a URL indicating the address of the page.

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