Yahoo: We Are Open For Developers

Yahoo has just announced an expansion of what it calls the Yahoo Search "Open Ecosystem".

Yahoo has been a leader for some time in the Web 2.0 space with several applications and innovations such as photo site Flickr and adoption of OpenID. Recently Yahoo opened up their search application for more customization by developers.

Today's announcement marks a stronger level of committment to new standards that will support the growth and development of the semantic web through the adoption of microformats - basically formats that help standardize the way applications can interact with data. Yahoo is supporting microformats including hCard, hCalendar, hReview, hAtom, and XFN

As we noted in a recent post about Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the future, the promise of the semantic web is extraordinary as it allows for richer, more helpful, and more navigable relationships between the billions of pieces of information flowing online every day.

Developers will also want to look for Yahoo's soon-to-be-announced beta program to build "enhanced results applications" using Yahoo search, not to mention the developer launch party hosted by Yahoo at their Sunnyvale headquarters.

Diclosure: Long on Yahoo

OpenID Experts at Web 2.0 Conference

If you are interested in OpenID, OAuth, OpenAuth and related technologies, come hear the high-powered panel on this subject at the WebGuild's Web 2.0 Conference and Expo at the Santa Clara Marriott on January 29, 2008.

The distinguished panelists will be:

• Johannes Ernst, Founder & CEO, NetMesh
• George Fletcher, Chief Architect Identity Services, AOL
• John Panzer, Technical Lead Manager, Google
• Nico Popp, VP, Authentication Services, VeriSign
• Shreyas Doshi, Sr. Product Manager, Identity Products, Yahoo! Inc.

The panel will begin at 1:45 PM and will be exploring whether these technologies are ready for prime time and what's coming, why Google, Yahoo!, AOL and VeriSign have implemented what they have already, and what's in it for you as a web developer or web business.

If you have questions you'd like to ask the panel post them here.

Yahoo Joins OpenID In Support of Single Sign-On

Today was a big day for OpenID, a single identity framework, given its anouncement that Yahoo is joining OpenID. OpenID is an admirable effort which aims to provide a centralized Identity system for authentication which can be used by any web site. You can read about the details if you are new to OpenID. Now that Yahoo has decided to join it, it means that the almost 250 million user accounts which are present in the Yahoo database are now part of OpenID, which consequently, means that the almost 9,000 sites that have implemented OpenID can now be simply accessed with one's Yahoo account. Of course, it's a big ease for Yahoo users since they won't have to create a new account for a new service they want to access. Note, that there have been rumors that Google is also thinking of becoming a part of it. Can there be any better news for OpenID?

Recently, there was also news that Facebook is joining DataPortability, which allows for the personal information of users to be portable to another service which also implements the same open standard. While Facebook has made us realize the importance of the social graph, it was still a closed garden which didn't allow any data to go out allowing only varied applications which could be run only inside Facebook. In the words of dataportability: "(Aim is) actively working to create the ‘DataPortability Reference Design’ to document the best practices for integrating existing open standards and protocols for maximum interoperability to allow users to access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems."

So, in a perfect and best case scenario, a user would need only one identity and his social information around it would be portable anywhere on the web and can be used by any service or widget or application. And this possiblity is much closer now with these two events that happened in 2008. Now, both OpenID and DataPortability are open standards and therefore, users would be much more willing and less fidgety about privacy issues. But of course, I highly suspect that everything would work perfectly from the point of view of the user. Note that services like Mybloglog arose because of a need for distributed identity which could be carried anywhere. Now with OPen identity and open social graph with info, much richer services than these can be launched. Of course details and services are a matter of pure speculation and I am also sure that many people are thinking about it. But what do you think? Comment up!!