However, in stark contrast to the 140-character wunder-app, Meme has proven in the months since its release to be a much better platform for multimedia sharing and cross-platform content curation. Now, the Tumblr/Twitter/Posterous hybrid is offering an API built on top of YQL, Yahoo!'s query language that we covered back in May, when we were impressed with its power, versatility, and uniqueness. The Yahoo! team has already used the API to develop a version of Meme for smartphones.

As an example of what YQL allows developers to do, Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brooks told us in May, "YQL... allows you to build tables of data from other sources online, using Javascript as a programming language and run it on Yahoo!'s servers, so the infrastructure needs are very small." Also from our May coverage:

According to Yahoo! Chief Technologist Sam Pullara, the idea behind YQL (launched in October 2008) was to create an agnostic query language similar to SQL, a language familiar to most developers, and let developers use that language to use the Internet as a huge database. "If you make it universally and simply accessible so every application developer doesn't have to learn every API, it's be easier for developers to create apps from the data users have taken so much time to make available on the Internet."

Although YQL looks a lot like SQL, it treats the info on the web as a virtual table that developers can manipulate in a standardized way, regardless of the API that data came from. Developers only had to know how to use YQL to quickly create simple mashups.

Interested developers can check out the Meme documentation. The API, the site says, "is intended for developers who are familiar with RESTful Web services." In addition to offering superior support for multimedia content and simple access through YQL, Meme also has an excellent built-in repost function, an asymmetrical friendship model, and OAuth compliance.

Yahoo! now encourages customers to burn their music files to CDs. That may not be a terribly onerous requirement, but the point is that when you purchased a license for songs, everyone really meant it when they said this might not last forever.

As Jon Healey wrote on his LA TImes digital media blog, both Microsoft and Sony have tried to shutter their music services without providing ongoing support for already purchased material. Both faced a substantial consumer backlash. Sony extended their support through the end of this year and Microsoft did so for 3 more years. Healey suspects that too few people ever bought music from Yahoo! to create that kind of backlash and doesn't seem to think it's a big deal any way. Given that Yahoo! may be the most trafficked company on the web, we find this hard to agree with.

We think this is an instructive tale about technology, rights to user data and DRM - which is sure to rear its head again if content industries are unable to find more effective monetization strategies.

Here's the email Yahoo! Music sent out to customers last night:

The Yahoo! Music Store, along with the ability to purchase and download single songs and albums, will no longer be available as of September 30, 2008.

Songs and albums that were purchased through the Yahoo! Music Unlimited Store are protected by a digital rights management system that requires a valid license key before they can be played on your computer.

After the Store closes, Yahoo! will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for music purchased from Yahoo! Music Unlimited, and Yahoo! will no longer be able to authorize song playback on additional computers.

After September 30, 2008, you will not be able to transfer songs to unauthorized computers or re-license these songs after changing operating systems. Please note that your purchased tracks will generally continue to play on your existing authorized computers unless there is a change to the computer's operating system.

For any user who purchased tracks through Yahoo! Music Unlimited, we highly recommend that you back up the purchased tracks to an audio CD before the closing of the Store on September 30, 2008. Backing up your music to an audio CD will allow you to copy the music back to your computer again if the license keys for your original music files cannot be retrieved.

For further information on the closing of the Yahoo! Music Store, please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions or contact Customer Care.

Stay tuned! While the Yahoo! Music Unlimited Store will no longer be available, Yahoo! Music has partnered with Rhapsody so you can still purchase your favorite tracks. Plus, Yahoo! Music will continue to offer users a complete online music experience with the largest collection of music videos, Internet radio, exclusive artist features, music news, and more!

Thank you for using Yahoo! Music.

The Yahoo! Music team

Recently Yahoo and Google announced a partnership for advertising. Yahoo will run advertisements provided by Google alongside the companies own advertisements. However, what was overlooked was the statement that both companies "agreed to enable interoperability between their respective instant-messaging services, bringing easier and broader communication to users".

The Problem

Companies like Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft try to do things that are beneficial for their entire community and not just for small portions of it. Stephan Shankland noted that:

"AOL said in a statement, in effect, that I am indeed an anomaly. "We have no evidence that interoperating with other consumer IM services is of great interest to AIM users," the company said."

This may come as a huge "ouch!" to early adopters, social media fanatics, and generally those that network online 24/7. Such users only represent a small portion of these immense networks. While they may be the users that push the envelope and can help the tools that these companies produce become better and more productive, AOL understands that the average users probably won't care.

In acknowledging this, interoperability becomes more of a distant dream than a reality. In layman's terms, it seems interoperability won't happen unless there's a major push from the majority of users or it's somehow beneficial financially for any of the parties involved. This may be a sad conclusion for some.

What it Could Mean

If Yahoo and Google do open up their respective clients to one another, this will be a very beneficial move to both parties because they have already integrated other platforms: Yahoo with Live Messenger and Google with AIM. Also, If it does happen users will at least have the option to pick between the two and get the best of the majority of these networks. If you have the majority of your contacts on Yahoo and Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger would be the best platform for you with the added benefit of Google Talk interoperability. If you have more contacts on Google and AIM, then Google Talk would be the better choice with the benefit of integrating your Yahoo contacts too.

However, is this really enough? I don't think it'll keep users from using third party clients that enable interoperability between all of these networks and more. Digsby is poised to take a serious amount from the market share of the standard clients because of its interoperability not only with IM clients, but also because of the integrated social networks and even email. It makes me wonder if maybe Digsby is poised to be the "Firefox" of instant messaging if the dominating players aren't careful. What do you think?

See also: Poll: Which Instant Messaging Client(s) Do You Use?

Microsoft has issued a public statement that they will continue to explore alternatives. While Microsoft notes of possibly venturing to third parties, they haven't taken their eyes off of Yahoo! yet. Instead Microsoft intends to talk with Yahoo and explore alternative angles to their former strategy. With little to no reassurance that any transactions will result, Microsoft states that:

In light of developments since the withdrawal of the Microsoft proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft announced that it is continuing to explore and pursue its alternatives to improve and expand its online services and advertising business. Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo! an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo! Microsoft is not proposing to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo! at this time, but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions that may take place with Yahoo! or discussions with shareholders of Yahoo! or Microsoft or with other third parties.

Yahoo!'s Response

To ensure that things would go over smoothly on Yahoo!'s end, Yahoo! also issued a public statement about the talks:

Yahoo! has confirmed with Microsoft that it is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo! at this time. Yahoo! and its Board of Directors continue to consider a number of value maximizing strategic alternatives for Yahoo!, and we remain open to pursuing any transaction which is in the best interest of our stockholders. Yahoo!'s Board of Directors will evaluate each of our alternatives, including any Microsoft proposal, consistent with its fiduciary duties, with a focus on maximizing stockholder value.

What really stands out about this statement is the following line:
"[...] Microsoft that it is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo! at this time."

Microsoft may no longer want all of Yahoo!, but Yahoo!'s search engine would be a very nice "alternative".

More Buzz

Leading industry experts are abuzz with news of what's really going on between Microsoft and Yahoo. Kara Swisher of Boomtown makes a note of an internal Microsoft memo with a strategy update from Kevin Johnson the president of the company's Platforms & Services division. The memo gives a little more insight into Microsoft's strategy for Yahoo, concluding that they can compete.

John Furrier the Founder and recent CEO of PodTech Network released even more interesting news today. While it's only a rumor thus far, Furrier says this:

My sources say that the Yahoo and Microsoft teams are bunkered down in a Palo Alto hotel hammering out the final stages of a transaction that will have Microsoft picking up the Yahoo search business. Word is that this deal will be done this week. While this is not surprising, it does bring to question the motives and plans of Microsoft.

Furrier also identifies why Microsoft would go through all the twists and turns to accomplish this. According to Furrier, with a failed bid for over $40 billion, Microsoft intends to buy the search business from Yahoo and move on to Facebook with a $20 million bid. "Integrating the search team at Yahoo with Facebook puts a formidable army to take on Google." Scoble seems to be taking a similar stance and even goes as far as stating how the situation explains Facebook's hostile behavior towards Google this past week.

War of the Worlds Part II

Is one of the biggest showdowns in tech history about to play out between Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook. Can Google continue to lead the search industry with the best of Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook fighting against them? While, this remains to be seen, we fully intend to keep you posted as the story unfolds.

According to a first report on TechCrunch, the initiative will begin with user information from MySpace being made available to Yahoo, Twitter and eBay in the next few weeks. MySpace is reported to have said that they will seek ways for "mom and pop sites" to participate as well in the future.

Though details are thin right now, it appears that end users will be able to do things like find friends from MySpace on Twitter, perhaps search for Twitter friends on Yahoo! Instant Messenger and perhaps port Flickr photos easily to eBay.

User authentication will be done with the emerging standard oAuth - which is a big win for the people working on that.

Below is a mock-up posted by TechCrunch of a MySpace developer's Twitter page, apparently integrating his profile information from MySpace.

Why is MySpace Leading The Charge?

We can't help but wonder why MySpace appears to be taking the lead on this initiative instead of Yahoo! - who recently announced that all their properties will be rewired top to bottom to facilitate friend and content portability. TechCrunch asserts that MySpace will become the central hub where people will store their information, but we hope that none of the partners will play that roll. True social interoperability shouldn't privilege any one site over another.

Hopefully that won't remain an issue. In a blog post this morning, Data Portability Working Group founder and chair Chris Saad announced that MySpace has officially joined the Working Group and that "we hope to see the MySpace "Data Availability" initiative evolve toward becoming a compliant implementation of the DataPortability Best Practices." We hope so too.

Ben Metcalfe, a co-founder of the Data Portability working group, is "Director of Engineering, MySpace Platform" and will be heavily involved in the deliverables, Saad told us. Metcalfe is a guy who doesn't take any B.S. so we hope he can make this work. Update: Metcalfe offers a response in comments below.

For some reason the announcement is being framed with the term "Data Availability" - which does seem to imply that it's something different from Data Portability. If MySpace ends up owning this initiative it's going to be a real shame. Data Portability standards are available and ready to be innovated upon - we really hope this partnership doesn't take the form of a new social "walled garden."

We hope that all of the content at issue will be marked up with standards-based microformats, be made accessible with standards-based authentication and be freely available to any party that wishes to innovate on top of it. Most of those wishes seem to be coming true with this announcement.

MySpace told Michael Arrington that they still intended to leverage the Google lead Open Social as soon as it was ready. That's what everyone's saying; Open Social seems to have been a major disappointment, falling far short of the kind of cross-site data portability that today's announcement seems to aim for. Hopefully this network of partners will open up fast, not just to each other but to the web at large.

Check out this new video from Data Portability, just released and seen here first. Made by smashcut-media.com. Let's hope that the folks pushing true data portability aren't relegated to making dazzling videos while the vendors keep to themselves and cut deals.

The first two apps to engage with Fire Eagle is Dopplr, the super-hip social-travel app, and Danger Day, a service for updating your location on Twitter. Others are ramping up quickly, though Fire Eagle is still invite-only. We've got invite URLs posted at the end of this post, knock yourselves out. The Yahoo! Group for developers interested in Fire Eagle is here.

First, Yahoo! put privacy right out front. Many people want their data to be portable from service to service and many people want that to include their location data from mobile or other interfaces. I personally don't want my location broadcast automatically, at all, to anyone thank you very much. Fire Eagle has privacy and user control of data written all over it.

Users have the option to hide themselves with a single click, they can click to purge all their data from the Fire Eagle databases, the service even lets you select how often you'd like to receive an email reminding you that it is tracking your location as asking you to confirm that you want tracking to continue. By default you're emailed once a month for consent to be reconfirmed! Hello trust building measures! It's almost enough to make me interested in exposing my location, selectively.

Second, the way Yahoo! is developing its Platform is great. It's offering API kits in five different programming languages, it's got user authorization protocols already available for web, desktop and mobile apps and it's using the open standards community built oAuth to facilitate faster, more secure mashups. We wrote about oAuth's launch here and Google is also using it extensively in OpenSocial. This aint no cry-baby do it my way or I'm taking my ball and going home framework like the Facebook platform. This is leveraging universal open standards.

Standards based platform plus strong privacy equals the best scenario I can imagine for a location tracking service. We'll see what kinds of innovative applications get built on top of it.

I also understand why people might think that this launch is a competitor to Yahoo!'s own Del.icio.us, but I think that notion is a little mistaken. While socially driven news is ultimately an evolution of social bookmarking, the latter has evolved to the point where the two concepts can live largely independent of each other. For example, I use multiple social news sites, but use them predominantly to submit for and share with large groups of people (whom I don't even know in most cases, hence socially driven news). At the same time, I use Del.icio.us (and Instapaper more recently) to specifically bookmark a piece of information that I will have to recall later (or want to save for the long run), or that I want to share with a small, relatively defined circle of people. As long as Yahoo! can make the distinction between bookmarking information (long-term, more intimate) and driving news (more current, for the mass audience), I think both products can peacefully coexist.

Yahoo! is moving in the right direction, and a very exciting one for all parties involved, and here's why.

Why Yahoo! Has Me Buzzing

1. Integrating Search

Anyone who has ever used Google Zeitgeist knows how interesting and useful search statistics can be for determining what's hot and capturing people's imagination right now (i.e. Hot Trends that update throughout the day) as well as what people are interested in over the long-term and depending on the season (i.e. Trends). Now imagine the same principle being applied to social news. If people are searching for what is important and relevant to them (and often looking for more information on breaking news or other events that are happening at the moment) using that as one of the many 'popularity factors' ensures that the content is always generally popular and relatively current. Of course, that is just one of the many factors they take into account, but for now, this is a factor that is unique to Yahoo! Buzz.

2. It's Still Social

Too many people have unfairly characterized Yahoo! Buzz as not being social. A more fair characterization would be to argue that Yahoo! Buzz is not as democratic as some of its competitors, but it's still very social. First, the fact that user search patterns is one of the 'popularity factors' means that Yahoo! Buzz content is being dictated by its audience, not to mention that people can still buzz (vote for) stories they like, from the pool that has been preselected for them. Additionally, people can still share stories directly with their friends/contacts and further socialize the content by posting it to other social sites (which are all factors taken into account when measuring an article's popularity). While users aren't allowed to submit content and some advanced features, such as user groups, don't exist in the current build, the site is a solid half-way point between traditional media and new media. The sources are limited and largely mainstream, but what's popular is in the hands of the people.

3. Only Publishers Need Apply

There have been two major problems that people have had with Yahoo! Buzz. The first, as discussed above, is the users' inability to submit stories, and the second is the limited sources from which the information is taken. Yahoo! Buzz only allows sites that are a part of the Yahoo! Publisher Network (i.e. sites that run Yahoo! text ads alongside their content) to be included in the index of content users can vote on. Honestly, I think this is the smartest move Yahoo! could have made for itself. However, does this mean that we won't get all the niche content that we have learned to love? Let me put it this way, in case you didn't read the fine print:

"Every day, a few of the top Buzz articles will be bumped onto the Yahoo.com main page, giving the story potentially the widest audience possible on the internet. Reports suggest that, in tests, links to Wired.com received over 2 million unique hits in 2 hours."*

* Note: Yahoo! says that they are able to rotate coverage on the main page for smaller sites unable to keep up with the traffic.

Now let me ask you, have you gotten your Digg fix today?

I agree that the limited selection is off-putting, but being realistic, I don't see this as a problem at all. With the prospect of being featured on the Yahoo! main page, or even being featured among the top stories on Yahoo! Buzz (which I think will have no trouble building traffic) is an incredibly lucrative proposition that no one in my mind would decline just because it requires you to be a part of YPN. As soon as the site is taking applications (I'm not sure how the inclusion process will end up working), you can bet that every site out there will want a piece of the Buzz and niche content wont be hard to find at all.

More generally, with social news, it's always a chicken and egg game. You need a community to get good content, you need good content to build a community, but that community won't come if there is no good content, content that they are supposed to provide. Well here's where Yahoo! gets lucky. Yahoo! already has millions of registered users and millions of people visiting the site daily that can actively be converted to Buzz participants by either driving traffic or integrating the new site with search and news features on the portal. Just as important, Yahoo! doesn't immediately need a large user base (for submissions) because the content (from pre-approved publishers) is automatically indexed on the site and users can browse and vote it up.

Why Yahoo! Should Be All Abuzz

Yahoo! Buzz is a great proposition for everyone but the most active and most passionate participants of socially driven news sites (all 1,000 of us). Without making this too long, Yahoo! is giving you, as a publisher, the opportunity to reach fairly good circulation directly through the Buzz site, and a chance at fulfilling your yearly traffic and exposure quota and all you have to do is three things. First, make sure that you are a member of the Yahoo Publisher Network, second, join Yahoo! Buzz, third, create relevant and quality content that people want to read. And as a reader or member of the social news community, Buzz gives you the quality and breadth of Yahoo! News and, as of now, 100 other high quality publishers from across the web (likely to increase massively), while at the same time letting you have some say in what gets exposure and experiment with social news elements.

This is an excellent move for Yahoo! in many ways. This is the easiest way to explain what Yahoo! is about to create: Imagine if Digg had 10 times the incoming traffic, and got a percentage of ad-revenue from each of the sites that were promoted to the front page. Yahoo! Buzz does essentially that. The site, combined with the possibility of being featured on the Yahoo! main page, comprises of tens of millions of potential page views and because you have to be a member of the Yahoo Publishing Network, whenever content is promoted and trafficked by the Yahoo! audience, Yahoo! gets a piece of the advertising revenue pie. Not only does this increase the conversions for Yahoo! Publisher Network, but it also increases the revenue per conversion for Yahoo!. In essence, they're getting their ads on the sites and then creating traffic for the same sites.

Ultimately, Buzz is very much a beta product - but it has massive potential. The site should certainly allow user submissions (though I think it's okay to require sites to be a part of YPN), and is missing a host of other features. But even in its current state, I think everyone wins - Yahoo!, the content producers/publishers, and even most of the readers.

It's an incredible piece of PR and, some might suggest, fear-mongering. But let's throw these questions open. Let us know in the following poll what you think about Google's response to Microhoo!.

UPDATE: Microsoft has responded to the Google blog post. In a statement from Brad Smith, General Counsel, Microsoft states that "the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising"; areas where of course Google is number one. The lawyers are sniping, this battle is getting heated...

If its business analysis you're looking for, go read Paul Kedrosky. Here at ReadWriteWeb we focus more on the cultural impact of innovation in technology. On that front, I think this acquisition could be very good news.

Yahoo! is great at content and online innovation, though. That's what Microsoft needs right now. Google is posing a threat to Microsoft not just because it is winning in advertising, where Microsoft is a relative beginner, but because Google is shifting the software world to online.

Microsoft is serious about innovation, they just haven't been doing much of it in house for awhile. The Live.com work and the Microsoft acquisitions in the health space indicate to me the company really is trying to do more than just catch up in search and advertising.

I think that this acquisition is going to mean a whole lot more energy put behind services like Flickr and Del.icio.us and innovative content sites like Yahoo! Sports and Finance. All of that will be good for Microsoft and it will be good for those of us who find those sites and services inspiring.

It's hard to know what the impact of layoffs will be, or if the Death Star culture of Microsoft will quash a lot of the Yahoo! spirit, but it's going to be a huge company and I'm hoping we will see some very cool things come out of it.

Like the AOL announcement of roughly the same thing in February of last year, the key question is whether Yahoo! will do anything substantive with OpenID or whether, like the AOL announcement, this will just be window dressing to legitimize advocates of OpenID. AOL's support for OpenID appears to have resulted in little more.

Nothing but a few information pages are live at Yahoo! yet, though the announcement went out a few hours ago. Those pages say that users will need to enable OpenID for their Yahoo! accounts; there's no info I can find on how to do that and other sites say they can't find an OpenID server when I try to use my Yahoo! ID that way. Silly me, nothing will be live until the last day of January it turns out.

Far more is possible

There's no information about what a Yahoo! OpenID will look like, either. Will it just be a dumb login or will the company offer important functionality like multiple personas (for privacy and user control), search friendly microformats and anti-phishing technology? There's a wide variety of ways to implement OpenID. I'd recommend you check out the site SpreadOpenID for a feature comparison of a large number of OpenID providers. Just authenticating OpenID is only the beginning, there's a wide range of features offered by various vendors too.

Public legitimacy and user numbers are great for the OpenID movement to receive from Yahoo! but I hope they will also contribute a significant amount of money. It sure seems to me that the whole thing could use some dedicated staff in order to put some meat on the bones.

What are Yahoo's interests?

One way to look at today's announcement is that Yahoo! will now know what other services its users use around the web and big yellow and purple buttons will be spread hither and yon. Sounds great for Yahoo! but if you've chosen another OpenID provider who better satisfies your needs - that doesn't mean much to Yahoo! right now.

What incentive does Yahoo! have to take the next step and offer full support to OpenID in general? Not much right now. In theory that could lead to access to user information from a wider number of users from other communities but when you're at the top of the hill with 248 million users that might not seem so important.

In theory if Google were to start accepting OpenID logins from Yahoo! users then the floodgates would open and Yahoo! would have to return the favor - but I don't know if we should hold our breath. Google has opened up to any OpenID login on commenting for Blogger but we'll see how much further that goes.

What's needed next

As a peripheral observer of the OpenID movement I probably ought not be so bold as to offer my suggestions for what steps should be taken next - today's announcement really is a big win for the OpenID community - but I'm an impatient blogger so I am going to do just that.

There needs to be a comprehensive campaign of public education about the value of OpenID in general. If Yahoo! would communicate with its users about these matters in a high-profile way that would be great. How many AOL users know they have an OpenID? Not very many.

Yahoo! should accept inbound OpenID from other providers. Have you seen the way that Basecamp and Ma.gnolia allow users to associate an OpenID with their in-house accounts? That could be a good model for Yahoo! to follow. If OpenID is about openness and not just about extending your own brand elsewhere, something like that has to happen.

Some of these major vendors need to put some money on the table. Presumably there are Yahoo! staff focused on OpenID and related matters, but neutral third parties need to be funded to move the entire agenda forward. I'm sure this is in the works but it's very important.

The pace of OpenID's advance is encouraging by some standards - 3 years ago effectively no one had heard of it, two years ago it was a pipe dream and one year ago the ball started rolling. This is the internet, though, and three years ago YouTube didn't exist. No one would cheer for the progress of online video today if it were crawling forward the way OpenID has. The benefits of online video are clearly communicated and there is money on the table, though.

OpenID is a matter of usability, data portability, user rights and will someday be a competitive necessity for vendors if implemented right. Today's announcement is good news, but let's not throw too big a party yet.

This is big news in New Zealand and rightly so. While not quite up there with Peter Jackson's achievements with Lord of the Rings, it does show that us kiwis can excel on a global platform. Andy Lark, who I had the pleasure of talking to a couple of weeks ago, is another kiwi who made it to the top rung of an Internet company (Sun Microsystems).

Is this Web 2.0? In the sense that I'm a kiwi and using the Web as a platform for making my own little play on the world stage - yes ;-)