David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo is in London today at the start
of
Open Hack Day, an event to encourage developers to build
applications based on the company's platform.
Speaking to Computer Weekly prior to the start of Open Hack Day,
Filo, said, "Most of the [internet] applications we see today will
become more social." He said Yahoo's Flickr, which is built around
photo sharing, is an example of a web service that is very social.
"Other services like search are not very social. But this will
change.
Yahoo has provided application programming interfaces (API) to
allow developers to create software on top of its search APIs and
YQL, the Yahoo Query Language. Yahoo Mail will becomes much more
social allowing users to see what their friends are doing, rather
like Windows Live from Microsoft.
Filo said YQL uses people's social connections to influence the
results they get back from from an internet search. So a search
could bring back recommendations from the
delicous social networking
site.
Clearly there is a commercial driver for Filo. He said, "In
terms of advertising, search advertising on the internet is very
successful." The question is how this model of advertising can be
applied to social networking sites and web 2.0. Filo believes some
of today's commercial models can be applied but some will not work.
"I expect, in terms of advertising, we'll figure out how to present
the right messages to the right consumers."
This raises the question of privacy and the unpopularity among
internet users of the Phorm track service, to target advertising
based on which internet sites users visit. Major sites like Amazon
have already
blocked Phorm.
Filo said, "Privacy issues are definitely important. We do what
we can to allow users to keep control over all their privacy. It's
v improtant we get this right."
Bandwidth is another issue that will curb the growth of internet
services. "It's improving but not as fast as we'd like," Filo said.
"Mobile device are getting better. In Asia there is high
connectivity rate. More and more devices are wireless or wi-fi
enabled so users get much better access. But in order [for the
mobile internet] to achieve mass market penetration, data plans
have to come down by some amount."
But these things are improving all the time. Networks are
getting faster and devices are becoming more powerful. Over the
next five years, Filo expects the web will be a more open platform,
many more applications will use social networking and people will
be using devices like set top boxes for internet access in their
living rooms rather than desktop PCs and laptops.