Yahoo! announced its “oneConnect” service for aggregating mobile communications tools — email, instant messaging (IM), text messaging (SMS), and social networks.
Yahoo! oneConnect is expected to become available in the Yahoo! Go 3.0 and Yahoo!’s new mobile home page in Q2 2008.
Key features of Yahoo! oneConnect will include:
- Socially-connected address book – Provide users the capability to integrate activity from popular social networks, professional networks, and communities into their address book, keeping it always in sync. Consumers will be able to view status updates, photo uploads, and the recent activity (“pulse”) of contacts across all their networks.
- Integrated mobile messaging – Offer seamless integration of IM and SMS, including threaded conversations. Any messaging service will be able to use Yahoo! oneConnect’s open APIs to plug into the application’s messaging feature – enabling consumers to access a wide range of popular services, such as Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger.
- Status – Give consumers the capability to view their contacts by their most recent status updates on popular social networks, as well as update their own status on their favorite social networks – in one easy step – and automatically broadcast it to their friends.
- Pulse – Provide consumers the functionality to see a dynamic overview of what friends are up to, including recent photos, their status, profile updates, and recommendations based on their most recent actions on popular social networks.
- Favorites – Keep the people consumers interact with most at their fingertips. Users will be able to set up messaging shortcuts to make reaching out as quick as possible.
- Social contact card – Allow users to aggregate the most relevant information on any given contact, including archives of past communications, detailed pulse history, and one-click ways to initiate communication.
- Location-sensing technology – Provide new ways to locate, chat with, and exchange contact information with nearby Yahoo! oneConnect users. Proximity alerts will notify consumers when a contact enters their vicinity.
Yahoo! said it is pursuing an open communications platform , allowing users the functionality to communicate via multiple communications tools – such as IM, SMS, and social networks. Widgets will provide users the capability to access their email across major email providers, such as Yahoo! Mail, MSN Hotmail, Gmail, and AOL Mail.
Additionally, Yahoo! is in discussions with DataViz, a company that allows mobile users to access their corporate Microsoft Exchange email accounts and Microsoft Office, documents, to work together on widget versions of its RoadSynch and “Documents To Go” applications.http://mobile.yahoo.com