Cui Bono? A Case in Point: Yahoo!
Earlier I concluded that the beneficiaries of the 'Web 2.0' movement would be Yahoo!, Google, and other large services platforms. I had not anticipated how well some of today's events at the eTech '06 conference would make the point for me. I'm going to pick on Yahoo!, as they seem to have made an effort to dominate the show, but eBay, Microsoft, even MapQuest are it at as well. (Surprisingly, Google seems to have sent the headhunters, but so far I haven't observed a developer relations presence. Hmm.)
Yahoo's! Jeffrey McManus did a particularly fine job of underscoring my notion that the combination of online distribution with a services platform will be particularly potent. See, even says 'platform' right in the name of his talk. Over the last year, Y! has been rolling out a sequence of developer accessible APIs. One of the purposes of today's session was to announce some new additions to the stable, perhaps most interestingly a venture into federated identity -- ahem! -- Browser-Based Authentication, leveraging Y's vast store of real and throw-away identities.
APIs for input into Yahoo services were also discussed. I can almost hear the forces of evil cackling over the new chance to pollute metadata, but a read-only platform isn't terribly exciting at the end of the day. While acknowledging that (for instance) the APIs of Flickr and Y! Photos are stove-piped and incompatible - a side effect of platform accretion by acquisition - McManus hinted very broadly at new unifying themes to come.
I am not at all denigrating the value and utility of what's on offer. Far from it. Things like the new user interface library will save an enormous amount of work of design, configuration management, and (lack of) usability testing. A great value and highly seductive, particularly at the offer price.
On point to the economic underpinnings of my analysis, McManus talked specifically about shifting the developer program from a non-commercial to commercial basis. Acknowledging that heretofore commercial arrangements with Yahoo! have been one-off affairs, he indicated a movement towards standardized terms Real Soon Now. Now having (of course) read that prior post of mine, you now know how to interpret that statement. He's talking about decreasing the transaction costs of doing business using Web 2.0 over the Yahoo platform. And that benefits? Right, very good!
Still not buying it? Then let's talk intangibles. After the conference attendees had gotten a start on their buzz with O'Reilly's wine in the exhibits area, the Y! Developers Network took the next party shift, and kicked it up a notch. We got your deejays, your vodka martinis in light-up glasses, your sushi made on the spot, your 'Mashup or Shutup' stickers strewn about. Yes, I do recognize the ambiance, having been to a few Apple Developer Conferences in my day. They may not be carrying 'evangelist' cards yet, but these guys are full-on in the platform business.
