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Yahoo! Social Directory

Are you looking to make your website more "social" so as to engage with your users at new levels? If so, then Yahoo!'s Social Directory APIs are for you! Simply put, Social Directory is the central location for Yahoo! profile data and connections lists. The Social Directory APIs will enable you to tap into a wealth of information to make your website more engaging and more "social" giving you the ability to achieve your engagement, distribution, and other business critical goals!

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

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 their connection's list
  • Increase product sales by surfacing trusted product reviews from a user's Yahoo! connections
  • Experience increases in user engagement by enabling easier article sharing to Yahoo! connections

The bottom line is that there are many possibilities for Yahoo!'s Social Directory APIs once you start to experiment! Specifically, the functions supported by the API are as follows:

  • Profile API: used to retrieve social profile information associated with a specific user and data their connections have opted to share with third party applications. The data in the profile is subject to a user's stated permissions but consists of information users have given to Yahoo! to better describe themselves, what they're interested in, their location, their relationship status, and much more.
  • Connections API: used to retrieve the connections (aka friends) that belong to a specific user
  • Images API: used to get a collection of image URLs (various image sizes) for a specific profile

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 ask your questions on the message boards.

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.

Ready to get started?

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