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Yahoo! Social Directory

Yahoo!'s Social Directory APIs provide access to a user's social identity and relationship graph on Yahoo!. Users activate their profiles and create relationships across the Yahoo! network on key anchor destinations such as Yahoo! Mail and the Yahoo! homepage. They then manage profile and relationship information on Yahoo! Profiles. The Social Directory APIs allow you to tap into that information to make your websites and your apps more social, increasing user engagement and creating distribution opportunities.

Getting Started

  1. Get an API Key
  2. Read the online documentation
  3. Learn about OAuth
  4. Get our PHP SDK or Flash SDK (optional)

Using the API or Web Service

Overview

There are two Social Directory APIs:

  • Profiles API: used to retrieve profile information associated with a specific user. The API can also retrieve data that a user's connections have agreed to share with third party applications. The data in the profile contains information users have provided to Yahoo!, including self-descriptions, personal interests, location information, relationship status, etc. Access to this information is provided only when users provide their explicit consent.

  • Connections API: used to retrieve the relationships that belong to a specific user.

A few examples of how to use the Social Directory APIs include:

  • Augment your site's profile by retrieving a Yahoo! user's profile and connections
  • Increase product sales by surfacing trusted product reviews from a user's Yahoo! connections
  • Drive more user engagement by enabling users to share content with their Yahoo! connections

Flash Support

Build Yahoo! Social Applications with Flash. Learn more.

Support and Community

Questions and suggestions on the Yahoo! Social Directory API are discussed on the Yahoo! Social Directory Developer Community Forum. If you have questions or need technical support, please use the message boards as they are frequently updated.

Rate Limits

The Social Directory API service is limited to 5,000 queries per IP per day.

Terms of Use

Use of the Yahoo! Social Directory API is governed by the Yahoo! APIs Terms of Use.

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