Yahoo details Blueprint development platform, oneConnect

SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo Inc. once again took advantage of the trade-show spotlight, using CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment 2008 to plug an iPhone version of its oneConnect offering and an expansion of its Blueprint development platform.
OneConnect, which was introduced at the Mobile World Congress in Europe earlier this year, but is only now coming to market, serves as a kind of messaging-integration application. The offering allows users to integrate contact lists, send instant or text messages and access a host of social networks including Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr and Friendster.
“Basically, I can always continue the conversation online or offline” with oneConnect, said Marco Boerries, Yahoo’s EVP of connected life, during a standing-room only, opening-day keynote crowd that contrasted with Tuesday’s sparsely-attended pre-show activities. “We can always fall back to SMS” instead of instant messaging when other parties are unavailable.
The application, which is available free from Apple Inc.’s App Store for U.S. consumers, marks oneConnect’s debut. The company will offer versions for Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerrys and Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile-enabled devices “very shortly,” Boerries said.
Meanwhile, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company continued its aggressive pursuit of developers with the expansion of Blueprint, a development platform for smartphones and feature phones. Initially available as a way to create mobile widgets for Yahoo Go – which first came to market two years ago – the platform has been expanded to allow developers to build standalone applications for Java, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices, and to create mobile Web sites for “virtually any” HTML or xHTML wireless browsers.
Yahoo used the broader CTIA conference in Las Vegas earlier this year to tout oneSearch, a mobile search application that appears to have seen substantial uptake.
Like Google Inc. – its nemesis just down the road – Yahoo hopes to spur development through Yahoo Go as well as boosting uptake on the wireless Web in general, generating advertising revenues as traffic on the mobile Internet increases. And its traction among the developer crowd was evidenced by the substantial number of software-centric journalists in attendance at a press conference following the keynote speech.
“We are not the only ones creating these runtimes” atop Blueprint, Boerries said, “but also for those creating competing runtime environments. It’s really everything we did not only for ourselves but for others trying to build Web applications for (a wide variety) of mobile phones, which is really, really hard.”
And just like Google, Yahoo is banking that investing in application development pays off in the production of compelling applications that draw traffic and can be converted to ad revenues. Blueprint is non-proprietary and includes a full software developer kit for third-party developers who can distribute their wares via mobile widgets in Yahoo’s gallery, or can make them available from other sites.
“This is not about creating a lowest common denominator, it’s about creating the best possible experience” for users, Boerries said. “It’s an environment to create mobile services and only mobile services.”