Never before have small friends been so important to big companies.
Yahoo, best known as an Internet portal welcoming millions of consumers, is undergoing a transition to appeal to a different audience: software developers.
In September, for the first time, the company hosted a Hack Day, where it invited outside developers to mingle with its engineers and write ad hoc “mashup” Web applications using Yahoo’s online services.
The goal behind Hack Day–and a broader developer outreach effort–is to create a diverse network, or “ecosystem,” of partners, Yahoo executives said.
Making it easy for third-party companies to build applications that use Yahoo’s myriad services, from photo-sharing to search, helps drive traffic to Yahoo sites. Mashups could also drive awareness of Yahoo’s lineup, such as its instant-messaging service, executives said.
“We don’t think of ourselves as a portal company anymore. We think of ourselves as a communications application platform,” said Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo’s vice president of product strategy.
Full article: ZDNet News
