Yahoo has upped the ante in its campaign to rule the mobile Web…
“Once the free service becomes established, Yahoo plans to introduce discreet advertising on parts of oneConnect, sharing the revenues with phone operator partners…”
Barcelona, Spain, — Yahoo!, leader in developing mobile-first experiences, today used Mobile World Congress as the platform towards the future of mobile communications with Yahoo! “oneConnect,” which will combine e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging, and social networking in one mobile platform.
In 2007,
Yahoo! revolutionized mobile search with Yahoo! oneSearch, an optimized search experience designed for the mobile device. Today the company plans to roll out oneConnect as part of Yahoo Go 3.0 — an all-in-one mobile offering — and Yahoo’s new mobile home page in the second quarter of this year.
“In the meantime, Yahoo is showcasing oneConnect at the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona this week.”
Communications tools in Yahoo’s oneConnect include e-mail; instant messaging and text messaging integrated with a social-network address book, will allow mobile phone users to aggregate their social-networking updates and messaging in one spot on their phones.
Yahoo users will be able to keep track of contacts on social networks. Yahoo’s oneConnect will also tell you when your contacts are in the neighborhood. This means it can provide status updates from Facebook or MySpace.com as well as provide access to e-mail and archived instant-messaging chats.
The front-end is designed to eliminate the isolation that often exists between most forms of communication on cellphones and online services: a widget interface provides access to multiple common webmail services such as Gmail or Yahoo’s own service, while both instant messaging and SMS text messaging across multiple networks can be merged into a single, iChat-like interface that boasts threaded conversations.
“Last year we set out to reinvent mobile search with Yahoo! oneSearch, and today with 29 operator partnerships around the world covering more than 600 million subscribers, we believe we have certainly succeeded,” said Marco Boerries — the executive leading Yahoo’s mobile push — said he aimed to reach 1 billion by the end of 2009.
Yahoo is planning to “reinvent mobile communications” with its new Yahoo oneConnect, even as it fends of Microsoft. Yahoo said the oneConnect service “combines integrated mobile messaging with a socially connected address book.”
“Europe is now wide open,” he said in an interview at the trade fair. “For the rest of Europe, let the games begin.”
Social networks also play an important part, says Yahoo. With oneConnect, users can integrate activities from their social networks into their address book, so that, for instance, they can see status updates, photo uploads.
A component known as “Pulse” will provide recent updates from multiple social networks, including Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, among others. Any IM or SMS messaging service, including Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger in addition to Yahoo Messenger, can use oneConnect’s open-application programming interfaces.
A user can also update his or her — own status, “broadcast” it to friends, and maintain a list of favorite contacts.
Users can then see — to the extent that their contacts allow them to — their friends’ availability, activities and messages, without the bother of trying to navigate between Web sites and inboxes on a mobile phone.
“Today, most people have too many forms of communications,” said Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo’s Connected Life division. “To keep in touch with all of them you have to go to all of these different Web sites.”
Yahoo will also offer integrated mobile messaging. That means any messaging service provider will be able to use Yahoo’s application program interfaces to integrate with oneConnect’s messaging feature, according to the company.
Yahoo said it will use an open communications platform to give users the freedom to send e-mail, instant messages, text messages, and access social networks through a single application.
Users may potentially be able to access both their personal and work messaging services. Yahoo also said it is in discussions with DataViz, which specializes in mobile access to Microsoft Exchange e-mail accounts and Microsoft Office documents. The two would team up to develop widget versions of DataViz’s RoadSynch and Documents To Go applications.
Using GPS tracking, cell tower triangulation and/or near field communications like Bluetooth to get a fix on the cell phone user’s exact location, the service can be set up to let people know if their friends are in the same area.
Other features in oneConnect include the ability to set up messaging shortcuts to get in touch with people more quickly; a social contact card for collecting relevant information about contacts; and a location-sensing capability for locating, chatting, and exchanging information with nearby oneConnect users.
“Yahoo expects oneConnect to support hundreds of mobile devices and mobile browsers worldwide.”
By contrast OneConnect should be able to run on most mass-market phones that have a browser, said Boerries. Boerries also said the company is working on versions of the service for Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry. The service can also be accessed from any Internet browser through Yahoo Go 3.0.
With oneConnect, Yahoo is seeking to ride the wave of activity in social networking. One of the areas under development in social networking is the ability for users to utilize anywhere their contacts built up on one site, thus making a user’s relationships more important than any given site. Yahoo’s oneConnect continues that trend by endowing a user’s address book with the role of a mobile “hub.”
Tying social networks to mobile address books comes at a busy time for Yahoo. On Tuesday, it announced it was buying Maven, a platform provider for online advertising and video that is used by Sony BMG, CBS Sports, TV Guide, and others.
The oneConnect platform is claimed as open and will include a programming interface for developers that want to add their own services into the messaging system. Yahoo anticipates launching both the web and dedicated application versions of the service during the spring.
Yahoo’s hope is that it will become the default access point for mobile phone users accessing the Web. OneConnect fits nicely with Yahoo OneSearch, which aggregates news, weather, financial data, photos, and Web links based on search queries, Boerries said during a demonstration of the service at Mobile World Congress.
After its release, Yahoo! oneConnect is expected to become available across hundreds of devices and mobile browsers around the world.
For more information on Yahoo! oneConnect, go to http://mobile.yahoo.com/oneconnect.