What YOS Can Do For You
Here are just a few simple examples how you can use YOS to your benefit:
- Use Yahoo! to connect potential users to your service: Perhaps you have a Web site that sells DVDs and you want your users to be able to let their friends know when they have bought or recommended a movie. Using the Updates API, which is part of Social Platform, you can create an activity update any time your users write a movie review or buy a DVD. Yahoo! handles the user permissions and privacy on your behalf. This update along with other recent updates can be streamed to the user's friends. As they say, word-of-mouth advertising is one of the more effective ways of promotion.
- Leverage Yahoo!'s built-in services to your benefit: Perhaps you run a greeting card service. Using the Social Directory API, which is part of Social Platform, your users can access their contacts' birthdays (with their consent) and be reminded when it's time to send a greeting card.
- Promote your application to the largest online audience on the Internet: Perhaps you're an online app developer looking for the largest distribution of your work. Instead of spending time trying to build a Web presence, spread your applications where the users are. Using the Applications Platform, you can potentially reach millions of Yahoo! users across the world. No other network comes close.
- Use Social Platform as a social-network-in-a-box: With so many users already on the Yahoo! network, there's no need to start from scratch. Tap into Yahoo! social data and have access to user profile information, user connections, user activity information, and address book data. The information can be as granular as knowing the year a particular friend graduated from college, or it can be as comprehensive as retrieving the recent activities, profiles data, and photos of a person using your application.