CTIA: Yahoo! oneConnect for iPhone Aggregates Content

Yahoo Inc. is really running with this whole wireless-is-the-future thing. Last week, it was a mobile search deal with AT&T Inc.  This week, it's the extension of its oneConnect personal social media aggregation application to the iPhone, plus talking up some open development initiatives.

Marco Boerries, executive vice president for Yahoo!'s Connected Life division, put it thusly during Wednesday's keynote at CTIA: "This is a massive opportunity. Mobile can and will be bigger than the PC Internet opportunity — we just have to create an ecosystem."

oneConnect, announced earlier this year and already available within the Yahoo! Go mobile client for various smart devices, is now in beta for the iPhone, free via the Apple App Store. Boerries said the launch is significant because oneConnect has now been optimized for the iPhone for what he called the best possible mobile Internet experience available to users to date.

oneConnect provides a portal for social networking activity — allowing users to see everything from picture posts on Flickr to status updates from Facebook to Twitter microblog installments, all pulled into one big newsfeed. Then there's a "favorites" view, which can be set up by dragging and dropping, for tracking those five to 10 people you really want to keep up with.

It also includes a unified messaging function, with threaded conversation views. IM and e-mail are part of that, along with SMS. If you're in the middle of an IM conversation, and someone goes offline, you can continue the talk via texting and the conversation thread will remain intact.

oneConnect also offers presence information. Within the included address book is information for each contact in terms of which social networks you are connected through, whether he or she is online, and so on.

"We wanted to create something that reflects the holistic way people view each other and their relationships," said Boerries.

Boerries said that mobile data is a main initiative for Yahoo! strategically going forward, as mobile — and particularly open mobile — can create a wealth of new ad-serving possibilities.

To that end, oneConnect for iPhone was created by Yahoo! using its "Blueprint" mobile Internet application development program, which Boerries said is part of a three-legged stool — including an advertising-based "monetization platform" and apps like oneConnect — that will make up an open Internet ecosystem for mobile that will turn all voice users into mobile Internet users somewhere along the way. Blueprint can be used to write applications across "thousands" of devices, he noted. Yahoo! is also in talks with Apple to expose blueprint to Apple's own iPhone developer community.

"This is not about the lowest common denominator," Boerries said. "This is about the Internet being the best everywhere, reaching the greatest possible audience, enabling an ecosystem for billions."

Related Articles:

AT&T Chooses Yahoo! for Mobile Search

MWC: Yahoo! Announces oneConnect with Location Awareness

CES: Yahoo! Wants to Be Your Only Needed Mobile Destination

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