Yahoo! Unveils Social Inbox and Open Features for Key Products

Following quite closely in the footsteps of AOL’s Bebo, Yahoo! has unveiled a new version of their email inbox, which incorporates social media. Starting with a limited beta release, Yahoo is opening Mail up to third-party applications such as Flixter, WordPress, and Xoopit.

Continuing on the theme of opening up products, Yahoo also announced advancements in the following products:

• My Yahoo! – Starting today, My Yahoo! can be enhanced by adding applications created by third-party developers. The aps will range from productivity tools to games, and will infuse My Yahoo! with new social relevance. A new My Yahoo! Theme API lets third-party designers create themes for My Yahoo! pages
• Yahoo! Toolbar – Next year’s new toolbar will be available for a sneak preview later this week at toolbar.yahoo.com and will provide constant access to online tasks and news. Features include:
  • Apps for checking new email from Yahoo! and other popular Web-based email providers, monitoring or searching for items on eBay, and finding local movie showtimes
  • Alerts that notify a user about Updates from their personal connections – including their friends’ recent activity across the Yahoo! network and eventually, elsewhere on the Web.
  • Personal search suggestions that surface the sites a user has visited and provide vertical search results directly from the Toolbar.
• Yahoo! Updates – This new feature will allow users to quickly check their updates across the Yahoo! network, such as a recently Buzzed article, a hotel review in Yahoo! Travel, adding a new app to My Yahoo!, or a rating on Yahoo! TV. Earlier this fall, Yahoo! has already begun displaying activity updates in Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Buzz. Activity updates from other social sites across the Web will be included in the coming months. The Yahoo! Updates platform is also available as an open API.

What do you think of the Yahoo! announcements? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

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