Exposing the Web’s Biggest (Free) Billboard

Micah Laaker | Big (D)esign Conference

2009.05.30

Who?

Director of User Experience, Yahoo! Open Strategy (Y!OS)

Work for 3rd-party Developers and Publishers

APIs, Web Services, Applications, and RSS

COMMENTS: I’m Micah Laaker, Director of User Experience for Yahoo!’s Open Strategy, which basically means I lead a team of tremendously talented designers and prototypers on our efforts to support 3rd-party developers and publishers (a.k.a. people like you, who create interesting and innovative Web-connected products). Yahoo! offers over 40 services and APIs to the world, ranging from Data (think: content) to Services (think: Mail and Search). Last, but maybe most important of all, I’m from Omaha. You can ask anyone I work with back in the Bay Area; they hear it over and over again: I’m proud to be from Omaha, and love the creative spark here that kick-started what I’ve done to date.

Agenda

Overview of Yahoo!’s reach

Review open components

Profile, Social Graph, Activity Stream, Open Canvases

Updates sources and experiences

How to leverage

Total time spent online 13% Total time spent at Yahoo! COMMENTS: Of that usage, more than 10% of that time is spent on Yahoo.com pages and applications. Yahoo! has audience.

Yahoo! Home Page 300m

Yahoo! Mail 300m

Yahoo! Messenger 90m

My Yahoo! 40m

Y!OS

Open Canvases

Activity streams

Foundational elements:

Profile

Social Graph

Profile

1 Single Profile for the network Consistent user reflection everywhere

Social Graph

Connections Graph 2-way confirmed relationships

Open Canvases

Search Yahoo! Search Use microformats to alter display

Mail Yahoo! Mail Apps can use Mail-specific features

My Yahoo! My Yahoo! Modules allow quick App dashboard with profile and social user data

YAP Cody I Matt L Yahoo! Canvas View Full-page App experience with rich interaction, profile, and social data

COMMENTS: From Pipes, I began working on one of Yahoo!’s recent efforts. Our Application Platform allows anyone to take content and experiences from their product and launch them into a Yahoo! canvas. Think of our “Apps” as your site inside of Yahoo!... i.e. meeting your users where they already are. Users can add any apps they wish to places like My Yahoo!, where millions of users start (and end) each day. Here, for example, you can see one of Watercooler’s (a great company down the road from us in Mountain View) TV-themed Apps for Arrested Development both on its own full canvas page and as a widget on My Yahoo!. Addicted to… Trivia, quizzes, and quotes about TV

COMMENTS: From Pipes, I began working on one of Yahoo!’s recent efforts. Our Application Platform allows anyone to take content and experiences from their product and launch them into a Yahoo! canvas. Think of our “Apps” as your site inside of Yahoo!... i.e. meeting your users where they already are. Users can add any apps they wish to places like My Yahoo!, where millions of users start (and end) each day. Here, for example, you can see one of Watercooler’s (a great company down the road from us in Mountain View) TV-themed Apps for Arrested Development both on its own full canvas page and as a widget on My Yahoo!. What’s Cookin’ Find great dinner and drink pairings

COMMENTS: From Pipes, I began working on one of Yahoo!’s recent efforts. Our Application Platform allows anyone to take content and experiences from their product and launch them into a Yahoo! canvas. Think of our “Apps” as your site inside of Yahoo!... i.e. meeting your users where they already are. Users can add any apps they wish to places like My Yahoo!, where millions of users start (and end) each day. Here, for example, you can see one of Watercooler’s (a great company down the road from us in Mountain View) TV-themed Apps for Arrested Development both on its own full canvas page and as a widget on My Yahoo!. Mint.com Personal Finance Track your bank & investment accts.

COMMENTS: From Pipes, I began working on one of Yahoo!’s recent efforts. Our Application Platform allows anyone to take content and experiences from their product and launch them into a Yahoo! canvas. Think of our “Apps” as your site inside of Yahoo!... i.e. meeting your users where they already are. Users can add any apps they wish to places like My Yahoo!, where millions of users start (and end) each day. Here, for example, you can see one of Watercooler’s (a great company down the road from us in Mountain View) TV-themed Apps for Arrested Development both on its own full canvas page and as a widget on My Yahoo!. Lexulous Head-to-head Scrabble game

COMMENTS: From Pipes, I began working on one of Yahoo!’s recent efforts. Our Application Platform allows anyone to take content and experiences from their product and launch them into a Yahoo! canvas. Think of our “Apps” as your site inside of Yahoo!... i.e. meeting your users where they already are. Users can add any apps they wish to places like My Yahoo!, where millions of users start (and end) each day. Here, for example, you can see one of Watercooler’s (a great company down the road from us in Mountain View) TV-themed Apps for Arrested Development both on its own full canvas page and as a widget on My Yahoo!. Gas Prices by GasBuddy.com Find the lowest prices for fuel

COMMENTS: From Pipes, I began working on one of Yahoo!’s recent efforts. Our Application Platform allows anyone to take content and experiences from their product and launch them into a Yahoo! canvas. Think of our “Apps” as your site inside of Yahoo!... i.e. meeting your users where they already are. Users can add any apps they wish to places like My Yahoo!, where millions of users start (and end) each day. Here, for example, you can see one of Watercooler’s (a great company down the road from us in Mountain View) TV-themed Apps for Arrested Development both on its own full canvas page and as a widget on My Yahoo!. Mafia Wars Raise and run your own Mafia

COMMENTS: From Pipes, I began working on one of Yahoo!’s recent efforts. Our Application Platform allows anyone to take content and experiences from their product and launch them into a Yahoo! canvas. Think of our “Apps” as your site inside of Yahoo!... i.e. meeting your users where they already are. Users can add any apps they wish to places like My Yahoo!, where millions of users start (and end) each day. Here, for example, you can see one of Watercooler’s (a great company down the road from us in Mountain View) TV-themed Apps for Arrested Development both on its own full canvas page and as a widget on My Yahoo!. Apps publish to Updates Choose which activities fire Updates which then drive others to your App

Activity Stream

Where do Updates come from?

Inputs

Network properties

Services from around the Web

3rd-party Applications

Open Applications

OAuth Apps

Yahoo! Services publishing Updates events

3rd-party products publishing Updates events

Easily link your Web accounts to Yahoo! Updates Link up off-network services Add 21 services in one fell swoop

MyBlogLog offers additional feeds mybloglog.com/buzz/e_profile_serv.php

JS-Kit integration 800k blogs allow Yahoo! sign-in and Updates publishing

JS-Kit integration results Cross-web comments shared with friends (and world)

Blog Posts publish to Updates Increase distribution of your content

Blog Posts publish to Updates You control icon, link, and language around your Updates posts

Updates Everywhere

Aggregate

Front Page Most recent Updates from around Yahoo! and the Web

Yahoo! Mail Constant stream of friends’ Yahoo! and Web activity

iGoogle gadget Same content, different environment

Contextual

Yahoo! Sports Sports-only filter of friends’ actions

Yahoo! Sports Also see what others are doing

Yahoo! Buzz What content my friends find hot

Yahoo! Music Friend-filtered ratings/reviews

WP sidebar 3rd-party Integration User-specific Updates easy to share

Wrap it up, B.

COMMENTS: Just as an example of how powerful this platform is for getting your content in front of Yahoo! users, this is an App I created with some others in our group in about 10 hours for our recent Hack Day (an event we throw quarterly to quickly try out ideas by building working prototypes within 24 hours). It takes what Apps my friends have installed, subtracts the Apps I’ve installed, and gives me back a recommendation for which Apps I should consider installing (as my friends are already active therein). 10 hours. That’s it... and most of that time was just spent on the CSS and layout. Instantly deployed and available to any Yahoo! user for installation. Bringing it all together apps.yahoo.com/-octyip6g

YQL (Yahoo! Query Language) Easy means to collect + filter Updates

COMMENTS: Just as an example of how powerful this platform is for getting your content in front of Yahoo! users, this is an App I created with some others in our group in about 10 hours for our recent Hack Day (an event we throw quarterly to quickly try out ideas by building working prototypes within 24 hours). It takes what Apps my friends have installed, subtracts the Apps I’ve installed, and gives me back a recommendation for which Apps I should consider installing (as my friends are already active therein). 10 hours. That’s it... and most of that time was just spent on the CSS and layout. Instantly deployed and available to any Yahoo! user for installation. Updates as Content Mine Extract meaningful info from friends’ events to highlight relevant content

Use Open Apps to Publish Update App clicks result in events others can see, driving more traffic to your content

COMMENTS: Just as an example of how powerful this platform is for getting your content in front of Yahoo! users, this is an App I created with some others in our group in about 10 hours for our recent Hack Day (an event we throw quarterly to quickly try out ideas by building working prototypes within 24 hours). It takes what Apps my friends have installed, subtracts the Apps I’ve installed, and gives me back a recommendation for which Apps I should consider installing (as my friends are already active therein). 10 hours. That’s it... and most of that time was just spent on the CSS and layout. Instantly deployed and available to any Yahoo! user for installation. Common Components Open Apps leverage pre-built components like Sharing

How to Leverage Yahoo!

Lay the foundation

Create/update your Profile profiles.yahoo.com

Add Connections profiles.yahoo.com/contacts.php?p=1

Add Outside Services profiles.yahoo.com/share_more.php

Add Applications apps.yahoo.com

Download SDKs

Mac OS X and iPhone integration coming very soon

Grab our existing APIs/services developer.yahoo.com/everything.html

Build App(s)

Build an Application developer.yahoo.com/dashboard

Open Application (on Yahoo!) developer.yahoo.com/yap

OAuth Application (on your site) developer.yahoo.com/yap

Benefits

Free

Large, engaged, & diverse audience

1 point of engagement, with multiple endpoints

Complementary, not contrary, to Web standards

Summary

Lay the foundation profiles.yahoo.com

Get the SDKs developer.yahoo.com/social

Build an App developer.yahoo.com/yap

Use YQL developer.yahoo.com/yql

Publish to Yahoo! Updates developer.yahoo.com/updates

COMMENTS: To try out the different products I just shared, be sure to go to developer.yahoo.com. Specifically, be sure to try each of these (YUI, BOSS, YAP, YQL, and Updates) to use our latest and greatest products. By doing so, you’ll save yourself the need to learn (the hard way) the same lessons I learned before (about recreating services and reaching users where they’re already at). Instead, *you* can dive into building cool, innovative products that solve problems you want to tackle.

In Conclusion