Yahoo! opens homepage to external apps

Invites developer YAPing

By Austin Modine in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Developer, 30th September 2009 06:02 GMT

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Yahoo! is opening its new Web 2.0-spangled homepage to a rabble of external apps and services.

The born-again(-and-again) web firm is rolling app integration into its main site as part of the company's recent "Y!ou" brand refresh. Previously, custom apps built with the Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP) were delegated to the user personalization page, My Yahoo!, but now they've been integrated right into Yahoo! homepage itself.

Yahoo! says it currently has about 400 apps ready to go, ranging from games to blogging tools to news aggregators. Sorting through them is a somewhat messy procedure at present, and hopefully, Yahoo! better organizes as more are included.

"We're looking to you to help us build the next big thing on Yahoo!, and in turn we'll shower you with traffic and users," the company writes to developers on its YAP site. The company claims to get over 330 million unique visitors per month worldwide on its homepage.

"We're working on an array of additional developer monetization opportunities — these will be available soon," the company said in a blog post. ®

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