Yahoo shows phase two of their social networking plan

Yahoo has announced Y!OS 1.0, the next stage in their plan to reform the Yahoo portal as a social networking hub.

Y!OS consists of three new elements. Yahoo Social Platform (YSP) is a REST-based social API for Yahoo network information, through which developers can access profiles, connections, contacts, updates and status information for Yahoo users. Yahoo Query Language (YQL) is a web service which allows developers to access other web services using a SQL-like language; Yahoo says it is similar to Yahoo Pipes, except that YQL can be driven from a command line. Yahoo Application Platform (YAP) which is an application delivery platform which supports OpenSocial's Javascript API and allows applications to be run on Yahoo's infrastructure including access to the social API and executing YQL.

All three components use OAuth to authenticate both the developer and the user on whose behalf the developer would be asking for data from the services. The development of Y!OS was noted when earlier this month, Yahoo switched over to a new universal profile, an external effect of the changes being made internally.

Yahoo is no stranger to attempting to create social networks, but its earlier effort, Yahoo 360, met with little success in an already crowded marketplace. Last year, Yahoo froze development of Yahoo 360 and said they were developing a new universal profile and associated platforms and tools for that. The announcement of Y!OS 1.0 appears to be the second phase of that process.

(djwm)