Okay, let me be completely upfront here. I'm not asking this in any official capacity at all. Really. Nobody asked me to and the people who could make something happen may or may not care what I have to say on the issue.
Are we clear on that?
Good.
I am curious anyway--because its a topic that comes up now and then. More now than then, it seems. People ask about Yahoo offering web services, but I'm not sure what services a user or developer would want. In other words, if I was going to make a big stink about it, I'm not sure what I'd choose to target first.
Search? Bookmarks? Finance? Messenger? Sports?
There's a lot of potential and a lot to choose from.
So that's the point of this post. For the sake of my curiosity, what web services would you like to see Yahoo offer? Not things that'd be cool but you'd never use, but the ones that'd actually be useful. Bonus points for ideas of what you'd do with 'em if they were available.
Posted by jzawodn at September 21, 2004 11:41 PM
Hm...what about Yahoo! Mail? And address book? I'd love to be able to write quick Ruby scripts to tell me what new mail I have. Or write a thick client to access Yahoo! mail.
Address book would be cool because then I could write a quick app that would keep track of addresses for me. And write plugins for Outlook and what not that use the Address book that I have on Yahoo. That way I don't have to keep them in sync and it works on whatever computer I happen to be using.
Bookmarks would be cool because again I could write a plugin (Firefox, IE, etc.) that allows me to use my bookmarks on whatever computer I'm on. I know the toolbar kind of does this, but I don't want to install the Yahoo! toolbar.
I'm not sure what type of web services would be interesting for Sports.
Now if you implemented WS-Eventing (I know I know one of the many specs that might never make it) on your finance sight that would be cool. Then instead of polling, I could sync up with Finance and it tells me when my Amazon stock is worth more money.
In fact, WS-Eventing might be something that Yahoo would want to look into because you could define filters for Finance, Sports, News, etc. And those would automatically be pushed to people.
Just my $0.02
Since you mention yahoo finance, I have a request.
Get a total returns database for mutual funds, and make it available via web service. Your data is misleading because it is not total returns, so it looks like the performance of a fund is worse than it actually is because dividends and capital gains are not reinvested.
The raw NAV values are almost worthless, but I'm sure most of your users don't understand this, and they are getting information that really isn't doing them much good.
I've wished Yahoo would implement web services (i.e. SOAP) in the Finance and Search sections for a loooooong time. A full SOAP interface to get quotes, financial data, search results (probably a lot like Google's API), etc. etc. etc. would rock. Might as well add web service to all those RSS offerings as well (mainly new I think).
I really like my .mac account and the automatic backup utility -- It's saved my bacon a few times.
As far a marketing and or customer retention a service like backup makes it hard to move or use someone else. That is the problem with a free service. Sense its free I don't mind jumping from one to another. My .mac is a fee based service and that is all I use and will continue to use because it's seemless and part of my OS. I think Yahoo has a great opportunity to do what .mac has done for the apple community in the PEECEE world.
Damn I love marketing and creating new concepts -- Yahoo needs to hire me! Or someone that wants to become rich of my ideas ;)
Secure LDAP read/write access to a personal addressbook.
The addressbook code is already there. Make it useful from every other mail app "out there"... And have a bulletproof security system for access (for obvious privacy and spam-harvesting reasons).
I'd definitely love to use the following:
- Yahoo Search API (ideally, one that returns more than 10 or so results at a time -- great if you want to build statistical calculations on top, as opposed to just displaying a result list to the user)
- Yahoo Image Search API (even Google doesn't have this)
And while we're at it, bring back:
- Yahoo News Search RSS (this was fine, but stopped working a few days ago)
It would be nice if Yahoo switched to XMPP (Jabber). Something like this is necessary for IM to become broadly interoperable. When you email somebody, you don't have to worry about which provider the recipient is with, you just need their address. It should be the same with IM.
A search web service like google api but without the tedious limit of 1000 automated queries per day.
Yahoo used to produce something called FinanceVision. It was a tv show, but more importantly a synchronized stream of web pages and links accompanied it. They had links to the Yahoo finance info on any of the companies being discussed in the live program for example.
I would like Yahoo to provide such a synchronized stream with any tv show.
You would watch tv and with a laptop browse to any related information (some of it would be advertising of course). More and more people now have laptops and wireless connections in their homes.
Gudmundur
It would be great if non-US stock data was not delayed by 15 minutes. This would definitely attract a lot of day traders.
Much, much better bookmark handling. Either buy BlinkPro, Furl, or one of the other up and comers, or fix your current one. You already cache pages, so it should be a simple extension of the search system to make a "personalized search" of my favorite pages. But allow folders also instead of just focusing on just gmail style "terms".
Many many people have written code that scrapes Yahoo!'s Finance information for inclusion on their sites, etc. It would be nice if there was a web service that provided this functionality.
Additionally, I think that with web services available for Messaging (including webcam stuff) it would make creating more interesting alternative clients and clients for other platforms a breeze. As it is now, most alternative clients are only capable of supporting the basics, because everything has to be reverse engineered. This would eliminate that step.
Sports and Finance.
Can you imagine how many small to medium size Fantasy sports leagues would kill for an API like that?
And likewise, how many businesses, individuals, and ISV's could make use of a finance API?
Not only that, but they're two VERY MARKETABLE services. They resonate and are understood by ordinary people.
Bookmarks you say? How about Bookmarks ala-del.icio.us? I know that some people are a little uncomfortable with del.icio.us being so public and would love for another service to offer a more 'private' bookmarking-type thing. Combine it with Firefox's Live Bookmarks and you've got something!
Oh, and a clone of the Google API too please! ;)
I've been waiting for AGES for a full Yahoo Finance and sports API. The apps that could be developed around that would be staggering. Throw in some sort of affiliate program so that app developers can make some money as well.
But whatever service Yahoo decides on , please , please please DONT use godawful SOAP - keep it simple!
I'd like to have a script I could run to hit an API for "My Briefcase".
Actually, Bookmarks. Bookmarks havent evolved one bit since the days of netscape 2.0. All they are is a list of links. No organization. Nothing. I've bassically always found them to be useless after I have too many of them.
There should be a service that would automattically categorize my links. Let me search them by category/subject, author, whatever. It'll keep them up to date for me (if something moves, or disappears), and maybe it'll be smart enough to suggest things I'd be interested in/related sites.
I'd like to see Yahoo grab a MSFT Office Clone and build a slick Oddpost-ish Web App GUI to it....
In other words, I'd like to see Yahoo get into the game of supplying web based office apps to the entire planet. Maybe even built on some open source stuff as a base? Full API, blah blah blah. I'd like to log in from anyone of my various machines and have all my office needs answered by Yahoo - mail, word processing, basic spreadsheet, etc...
The applications could compliment existing Yahoo services such as Briefcase, Yahoo Mail, etc.
.... It is only a matter of time before Google supplies this to the world.
The other idea is for Yahoo to get in bed with Tivo....
THe last idea is for Yahoo to become more of an infomediary...
Jeremy, I'm glad to see you are staying innovative in a company that has slowed pace as it becomes bloated. Lately, all the innovative things seem to be coming out of Google - whereas, all I see from Yahoo is more advertising displayed in unique ways. I know I'm exaggerating, but this is the sense I get from the market and most media.
It is cool that you're out doing a little gut reaction marketing research....
-David Zotter
A webservice to sync bookmarks would be a home run. When I was an IE user, I use the yahoo toolbar, but, now that i've switched to firefox, I don't have a great way to keep my bookmarks in sync. Although I don't use bookmarks that often, it's something I like to keep around and it would be great if I could access them from any browser.
Oh holy mother. A fantasy sports stats API would be sweet nectar. Stat Tracker's currently like $10/person (which I would happily purchase if Yahoo Wallet wasn't retarded), and I would happily pay that much for just a web service for the raw data...
IMAP and LDAP. I prefer to store email centrally & offsite. IMAP is a great way to access email remotely, and some email providers permit IMAP access, but not Yahoo!. But as far as I know, no email provider gives LDAP access to address books. Why is that?
I'd like to see RSS/Atom feeds for private Yahoo! Groups that support authentication and SSL. In general, I'd like more support among aggregators and publishers for authentication and encryption.
Bookmarks and mail. Currenty there is no good bookmark sync app that works with Firefox. I've tried many and I'm tired of playing with it. Open the code and then http://companion.mozdev.org/ will work properly.
Groups RSS would also be cool.
Basic and enhanced RSS support would be nice, i.e. for the newbie/neophytes locating and setting up RSS feeds via Yahoo. Might want to add a RSS reader for them too. MyYahoo support for Firefox and Mozilla would be nice too.
Kinda offtopic, but still something that I want from Yahoo.
The Personal Address feature of Yahoo Mail. They make you transfer your domain to their name servers, and if you want to put up a website at that domain, you have to host it with Yahoo.
I say let me host my dns and website and I'll give you an MX record, oh yeah and Money!
API everything -- Let the users create a NEW yahoo -- Make somewhat like a an open source web portal -- Everyone likes API's and people create some amazing things using the foundation of other programs. I know eBay is getting there with promoting their API
Fantasysports stat feeds. There's so much overhead involved with getting semi-realtime statisitcs.
Bookmarks!
Could I have a My Yahoo page with my Yahoo bookmarks in a few (3 to 5) columns in tiny print, so I can see them all on one page?
For blogs, and other pages I read regularly, I'd like a list of links that would self-organize based on how often I clicked on a link, and how long ago it was -- so I'd see a list (or Yahoo toolbar menu) with perhaps twenty items on it, consisting of a mixture of links I click on regularly, and links I haven't seen for a while -- I can reduce this to a formula if that would help. Right now I have a 'Miscellaneous' category in my Yahoo bookmarks with dozens of links in it - but they're not ranked in any way.
I'd also like a list of bookmarks for 'to do' links. It's easy enough to add links using the Yahoo toolbar, but there's no easy way to pop items off the front.
I'd like to be able to give the toolbar a list of bookmarks (e.g., by selecting a category) and skip through them using a 'next' button on the toolbar -- I guess I'd like to see the name of the site before I clicked on next. In fact, I'd like the toolbar to have buttons for 'show it to me more often', 'less often', 'skip' and 'delete'.
Is there some reason that you can't run a javascript bookmarklet from your Yahoo toolbar bookmark menu? Fixable?
Simple blogging accessible from the one true toolbar would be great.
(Graeme underscore Williams at Yahoo)
Hear hear for IMAP and LDAP! I want to be able to use the e-mail client of my choice at home, and the web interface when I'm away. I don't want to have to be deleting multiple copies of the same e-mail message. This is always a problem with POP mail accounts. I would gladly PAY for this feature.
I also wouldn't mind seeing Yahoo! Finance expanded to include an online version of a Quicken/Microsoft Money type of product.
Oh yeah... one more thing: Acquire Bloglines.com and incorporate it into My Yahoo!
Heh. Mark has already been down the "service acquired by Yahoo" road once before, I think. :-)
running a windows shop and thus having everything based in Exchange, the only thing that would cause me to switch from Google would be easy integration with Exchange. I envision this as a feature on a toolbar app which would store my searches in Exchange (or an Outlook pst or other clientspecific file), along with whatever annotations i wish to make about the search itself andor the pages i visited. Having this data in exchange would mean that i could search my past searches easily - This would be hugely valuable because easily 50% of the time when I'm Googling, it's to find a site or answer that I've searched for before.
I want APIs for mail and historical financial data, but once APIs are available how can you make money (or would Reuters be happy)? Maybe Yahoo! can add some text ads in the response?
I'd also like to send alerts to my customers view Yahoo! Messenger from my program.
If Yahoo! can bundle mail plus and some of the above, I'd be willing to pay.
http://www.angelchrys.com/archives/000275.php
I wanted so much it went beyond your comment field's limitations. Instead, I put up my ideas as a post on my site, which is linked above.
I dunno. I remember when Google was the new kid on the block. You'd tell people to use it, and they'd ask why? At that point, it didn't had all the ads and was a far more accurate search engine than what's out there.
IMO, Google's lost sight of what made them popular in the first place. While they're adding more features, to me, it seems that their search capabilities are very much the same they were in 2000. Sure. They're probably slightly different, but, probably not that much.
Probably the biggest problem with searching contant is the semantic nature of what you're searching. Like the Apple search video posted a few days ago, not only does it assume certain data structures in the data you're searching, but also assuming certian amounts of information about YOU and how you parse data yourself. As an example, a doctor is probably going to be able to understand far far more advanced search results without explaination than the average person.
Parsing the end data is somewhat difficult, since having a really GOOD semantic structure to your data requires a lot of processing and possibly human interaction. (So, the viagra team NASCAR racing site, is it a spam site, or is it legit)
But, more simply, there are some things that I'd *love* for google to have.
Being a 'computer person', i hate it when i search for something, and I hit a widely mirrored mailing list, like bugtraq. I have 10,000 results of mirrors of ONE ENTRY in that mailing list. Surely, it'd take about 10 minutes to hack up the code to say 'html aside, how close are these searches to each other'.
Probably the next feature I'd like is the ability to remove all sales-based sites. Sometimes, I want to look up a part. I don't want to *buy* the part. I want to make it run under . I end up wading through THOUSANDS of sales sites that have the same thing.
Finally, the ability to remove pure spam sites. I've found countless entries in Googles searches that appear to be something close to what you wanted, but when you go there, they're selling V14GR4! Surely a blacklist-type option would be helpful. If x% of users say this is spam, then it is. If it's not... you know the drill.
Surely, better search utilities for Yahoo would be possible. Keeping track of how you sort data, sort of how netflix keeps track of your ranked movies, would be possible.
Personally, I think that people that say that Google is headed down having their own browser are right on the money. When head honcho's at Google say they're not 'a search engine company', the're right on the money. Google will be soon 'selling' the 'InternetOS'. A web browser that does everything that you need in a basic OS. Passes the 'mom' test, if you will. Basic office applications (Who uses 90% of the junk Office offers anwyays?), and, of course, the internet. Mom's gotta have her porn, right? :)
I think Yahoo could still be a player in this arena as well. Google is going to be going for the end user market. I think there's something to be said for the corporate environment as well.
As an example, make an 'application server' for YahooIM. Those tabs? Make it so that those tabs can be redirected to internal resources. So, when you're at work, you can view server status easily. Can you hand it off in RDF/XML fomat? Good. We can make it available to our users internally.
The concept of the semantic web also fascinates me endlessly. In any given organization, how many people do you think are researching a given topic within an organization (including the internet) at any given time? Say you've been assigned the task of 'finding the best open source database in the world'. You find data. You parse data. Some is worthwhile, some is not. Some is 'confidential', some is not. Meanwhile, someone else in your organization, or in one of the other companies in the world is searching the same thing themselves.
An ability to search among these results as a refiner of data. Sometimes, having every Yahoo user cull through their results can leave you with an amazing amount of useful data on hand. I have xyz project. I found these 23 links that helped ME out. They may help me, but, possibly not you.
Bookmarks begat Del.icio.us which begat Furl
Now that AskJeeves is offering this, and Furl just got bought by Looksmart, Yahoo has to build this or buy it (Spurl?) just to keep even.
To go past it, Yahoo needs to figure out how to make a great personal internet archive, with data on the server easily accessible from the desktop (via a dedicated client?) and combined with others.
Yahoo provide stocks in CSV format but not RSS format - why so ?
I'd also love LDAP access to the address book as well as IMAP for mail. Furthermore, SyncML synchronization for mobile devices with exactly that address book & calendar.
Two things:
Identity Mgmt - ability to validate YHOO user ID
Communication Services - ability to deliver
subscribed content to YHOO ID over existing YHOO mechanisms (IM, SMTP, SMS, etc)
YHOO is definitely missing out on a revenue stream here
Yahoo needs to support Mac better, period. From their LaunchCast service to Yahoo Messenger that looks like a newbie programmer hacked it together, Yahoo intentionally seems to ignore Apple users.
Even Microsoft supports Apple better. Look at their MSN Messenger and compare the looks and functionality and you'll see what I mean.
Yahoo must implement an API for search results. Screen scraping is just ridiculous and it's not like they don't know it's going on and that it's always going to happen. By implementing an API you can get more accurate metrics on actual search results from users vs. bots. Yes, there will always be a portion of folks who love screen-scraping but most developers want a standard for structured data so they don't have to constantly tweak and wonder if they're getting accurate results.
A side benefit is all of the free marketing and publicity Yahoo would get from the creative apps developed from this data. Giving folks the ability to use Yahoo's normal search results would make it a little 'less commercial' and a bit more appealing to the techie in all of us.
While I was at Search Engine Strategies a couple months ago in San Jose I was taken on a personal tour of Yahoo's campus. I was honestly amazed at the beauty of the campus and the perks employees received. I wanted to place an order for Yahoo stock right then and there. But I realized that most people won't ever step foot on Yahoo's campus or meet an engineer or even see the NOC. But that doesn't mean they don't exist. Yahoo's a really friendly company and opening up an api might make the public realize they do care about the average user.
Sports.
Especially an API to get at current results and future schedules. Right now there's no good way to do that anywhere.
A web based database like quickbase.com
It's there as a part of Yahoo Groups. Just let it have its own URL like data.yahoo.com and take away number of columns/ rows limitations.
Me too - I would also like to see the bookmarks upgraded big time.
If you have a lot of bookmarks then it is unbearably tedious to edit or resort them. This is the reason i stopped using the bookmarks facility.
And it would be nice if the various toolbar gizmos worked on Firefox. Some of us don't use IE.
Aggh, I just corrected a typo: it said "Some of us donut IE". This may actualy be true :)
I would like to download the entire contents of my Yahoo Mail in mbox format (or some other easily parseable text format).
We would love to be able to get an RSS feed for movie listings based on zip code or the ones I have added to my favorites.
Two items:
ID API. Much like the much-discussed upcoming typekey: only with a substantially larger website behind it. This would give a far larger userbase to yahoo, leveredge the brand extensively, and make logins easier. (Obviously, with site specific passwords, and a limit on the number of free sites a user could store .. perhaps charge for any over 10).
A well run replacement for sf.net. Use arch or subversion, let the yahoo interface design team work their magic, and really expand the possibilities for developers.
How about allowing fantasy team hotlinks from 'My Yahoo' it's simple but far overdue.
I second the motion for a web API for Yahoo! Finance. I also would like their stock charts to look more sexier.
Well,
this is not related to webservices, but a complaint against new yahoo messenger from my mom. I mailed to yahoo people through some contact address thing, but not sure if it did work or not. If you have access to yahoo development please consider this reuqest. My mom is using yahoo messenger for about 2 years, if she wants to check yahoo mail, she just clicks the icon that was there in previous yahoo messenger which will take you directly to the yahoo mail main page. In the new yahoo messenger that mail icon is removed and she is finding it extremely difficult to navigate to yahoo mail. Can you please get that icon back in the messenger again.
It seems to be that everybody that's saying "Bookmarks" is really saying "Sync." I want better sync for Mac users, while we're at it. Actually I mean, ANY FRIGGIN sync ability for Mac.
Searching!
I think it would be great if you could do two different sorts of searches -- one where I want a quick and dirty search, and one where I'm doing something more like research. The former isn't exactly like Google's "I Feel Lucky" -- I probably want ten results not one, for example, when I'm trying to find some company's home page.
My imaginary better search engine for research has two panes, each with its own query input field. The first query field and pane does an ordinary search. The second query field is combined with the first query field and the results shown in the second pane.
For example, I might put 'flour' into the first query field and get results from that, and then put '-bread' into the second query field and get results for 'flour -bread' in the second results pane. The idea is that I can try out different ways of improving my search in the second pane, and if I get results I like, append (perhaps via a button) the second query field to the first.
You could get the same effect in a single list if you could color the results, presumably using the same neat interface as Google email.
Along similar lines, I wish I could click on a "More like this" button, and get my current results filtered or weighted, rather than starting a completely new, separate search.
And a Z39.50 client would be great.
Yahoo! misses IMAP, LDAP (see for a free LDAP account with SSL), iCalendar publishing (like and ), RSS-to-mail (like ) and XMPP with access to IRC channels.
i would love to see Real Estate information integrated into yahoo maps similar to the Smart View information. i think realestate.yahoo.com is really lacking and realtor.com completely sucks.
I think yahoo could take the MLS data and do a much better job of presentation. You could even sell the service (with more realtor-only info) to Realtors. what think?
I'd love a suite of web services for accessing the data in my store. That way I can interface it with my own accounting, inventory, etc., and add a handheld interface if I want.
Open up Launch.com. Let me get my ratings, or add artists to the Launch database (or, at least, my local copy). Give my radio station an RSS channel so others know when my ratings have changed. Oh and let me run Launch on lots more platforms, such as Pocket PC, Palm, Linux, Mac, etc.
When people view their profiles and would like to edit them, there should be more options on the martial and occupation drop-down menus. For instance, on the martial status, there should be a place for "Taken" instead of long-term relationship, some people don't fall into that category as of yet. Also, there should be an option where you can add what you want to the menu, like "I love my girlfriend/boyfriend", "My heart belongs to my girlfriend/boyfriend", and also you should be able to type what you want in the box.
In the occupation menu, you should be able to specify what you do by typing it in, some jobs aren't listed in the menu.
Thank you for reading my post.
I have a great idea to make Yahoo! Messenger even better. It would be great if I could talk to anyone in the world using Yahoo! Messenger. It would work like this: I type my message and send it to whom I am talking, the messenger translates it into their language and shows it to them. When they reply to me, the messenger translates it and shows me what they said, in my language. Imagine the increase in world-wide productivity!
I'd like to see a service for the tv listings. I think it would be cool to allow people to design apps or spreadsheet to get a listing of their favorite shows and store descriptions and stuff like that.
Thanks for asking
I believe making a WS API for Yahoo! Finance is of great demand.
I would like to see a Yahoo! search API as a few people have already stated.
I just sent a short E-mail to vgjewett@yahoo.com, but it was not delivered. Can anybody tell me why? She's been using that address for a long time, and so far as I know she's still alive!!!
I just sent a short E-mail to vgjewett@yahoo.com, but it was not delivered. Can anybody tell me why? She's been using that address for a long time, and so far as I know she's still alive!!!
(Fantasy) Sports Statistics!
Would allow us to build our own applications that monitor players' performances and give those of us geeks that dabble in fantasy sports an edge over our non-WS-enabled opponents!
A useful web service for yaoo to offer would be a mapping web service to return mapinformation and directions.
Offer the same XML Api to the Overture DTC that Google has. And make the API signup easier to get to, instead of emailing for more info. Why not allow the API to be used with normal login info and some type of account related 'key'. You really have been stingy about giving free and automated access to the API. Google is not doing anything 'special' here, they are simply doing what makes sense for any company that expects others to spend time building applications around your saervices. Thanks for the opportunity to post this somewhere.
//quote//
(Fantasy) Sports Statistics!
Would allow us to build our own applications that monitor players' performances and give those of us geeks that dabble in fantasy sports an edge over our non-WS-enabled opponents!
//quote//
You mean like - http://sportsforum.ws/sportsdesk/d7 (my humble opinion its better than Yahoo's stattracker - except that it only works in IE - besides that it does not have any flash or java)
Best thing from Yahoo Web Services would be -
1. Current Stock Price for any COmpany on any stock exchange
2. Prices for a given period
3. Intraday trading details of a stock
4. Company financials
5. Key Financial ratios
I want to write an app which will display a stock price graph from data fetched from Yahoo Webservice.
Can any one please let me know if there is an API that works which can get email addresses in a yahoo account given the usr name and the password
???
thx
i would like to know if there is a yahoo api or whatever it is, that allows me to send password in this format (******) to a user am chatting with, and the user am chatting with will be able to see the decoded format of what i typed,
useful in situation where am chatting from a location with people behind me that can see what am typing
many thanks in advance
Yahoo! Groups RESTful webservices would be really nice. I'm a member in a number of groups and each have their own domain name and website, so it would be nice if we could integrate the group calendar and forums directly into our website (primarily the Calendar).
As everyone (OK, maybe not everyone) above, I'd wish for a Finance Web Service, or atleast a way around http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=ABB.ST&f=sl1d1t1c1ohgv&e=.csv - requires a cookie and stuff, and I need to get that info down to my java app. But there are a few web services that take info from Yahoo Finance, how do they access it? E.g. http://ws.strikeiron.com/SwanandMokashi/StockQuotes?WSDL
I would like to have two web services from yahoo:
1. Yahoo Mail
2. Yahoo Finance
That will be just great!!
Thanks,
-Viren
Yahoo is offering IMAP
http://www.yahoo.weblogsinc.com/2006/06/24/yahoo-mail-getting-free-imap-access/
There are ways for web apps to send free SMS text messages (screen scraping), but having Yahoo provide a mechanism for sending free SMS would be a benefit for communications. A short "brought to you by Yahoo IM" at the end of your message might make it worthwhile.
