Yahoo! Address Book API Delivered (Yahoo! Developer Network Blog)

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YDN YDN Blog Yahoo! Address Book API Delivered

Yahoo! Developer Network Blog

June 4, 2008

Yahoo! Address Book API Delivered

We’re excited to announce the public release of the Address Book API. I say public release because while the API is newly launched here on YDN, it’s been up and running with some of the most contact-aware applications on the Internet, including Plaxo and LinkedIn.

It’s been a long time coming, both for us and for all of you. Yes, we see the question come up often on the ydn-mail: Developer Community group and we’re pleased beyond measure to finally be able release the API.

This new API provides access to one of the largest collections of address books on the Internet--the contact system behind Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, and Yahoo! Go. This means your applications already have a built-in audience. The Address Book API supports a wide range of third-party apps, such as sending invitations to seed social networks or social apps, looking up postal addresses for shipping services for online retail, and providing address "auto-complete" for messaging apps.

The API has extensive search capabilities. Once a user authorizes your application, you’ll be able to easily access that user’s address book and look for specific contacts. If you want to see which contacts are new, you can ask what’s changed since the last time you accessed the API. More details are available in the documentation.

Here are some highlights of what you can do with the API:

Obtain unique identifiers (i.e., email addresses) to help build a social network.
Look up phone numbers for mobile and SMS applications.
Look up email addresses for content-sharing applications. For example, you can enhance the "share with friend" capability of your site. Make it easy for users to look up their contacts by combining the Address Book API with the YUI auto-complete widget.
Make it a breeze for your users to send gifts easily. They can add addresses from their Yahoo! Address Book with almost no typing.

While we are excited about what the Address Book API can do, we are just as excited about how it works. Today, the new API provides access to a user’s Address Book via BBAuth (our browser-based authentication). Users authorize your application to access their address book data through the Yahoo! login process. Access to their address book data is done safely.

What about OAuth? Support for OAuth is coming, my friends, in due time… Seriously. At Yahoo! we’re already doing a lot with OAuth (think Fire Eagle) and it’s a big part of our plans.

The new Yahoo! Address Book API unlocks the relationships that Yahoo! members have developed on Yahoo! and makes them easy to tap into on your site. We hope you love it as much as we do and we can't wait to see what you build!

Charles Wu
Product Manager, Yahoo! Address Book platform

Posted at June 4, 2008 9:00 AM | Permalink

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Comments

This is great news! Very exciting. Folks may want a link to the main Address Book api microsite, too: http://developer.yahoo.com/addressbook/

Posted by: Bryce at June 4, 2008 10:51 AM

congrats to Charles & team. great stuff :)

would be even more useful if you can take this just 2 baby steps further, by enabling filtered access to contacts as follows:
1) prioritized by messaging frequency (how often i contact them)
2) prioritized by keyword relevance (show me who i email about 'frisbee')
3) combine both of the above, and let me constrain to top X most relevant contacts

while this may seem like a rather detailed set of requested enhancements, by providing these basic filters you can actually simplify the user experience dramatically, and greatly enhance the utility by 3rd-party developers.

in short, what i want isn't the ability to access my list of 1000-2000 contacts, but a quick & easy way to popup a list of 3-5 contacts who i share an interest with.

example:
* show me top 3 people i share interests: "children" & "preschool education"
* show me top 10 people i share interests: "science fiction" & "iron man"
* show me top 5 people i share interests: "new car" & "toyota prius"

these could be used to let people share information, do a group purchase at a discount, or send a more constrained (& less spammy) invite to join a new site / service.

more details on these concepts in post below:
Memo to Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, & AOL:
How to Turn 500M email logins into Facebook Platform & a Crapload of Revenue
http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2008/05/memo-to-google.html

(apologies in advance for profanity & ransom-note fonts ;)

regards & keep on truckin',

- dave mcclure

Posted by: dave mcclure at June 4, 2008 10:57 AM

This is excellent news -- have been waiting for this for a long time and now I actually have a reason to use it!

Posted by: Jeffrey McManus at June 4, 2008 11:07 AM

Keep up the great work team! I've always been impressed with the innovations coming out of your teams, Charles.

Posted by: Greg at June 4, 2008 11:27 AM

Congrats Charles and team! I'm so excited to see this finally get out. [This is good]

Posted by: Veronique at June 6, 2008 10:08 PM

That's great news... Address Book is very useful stuff provided by Yahoo... I like the user interface of it...

dot net web services

Posted by: DOT NET Web Services at September 18, 2008 5:14 AM

Hi, I want to know if we can use addressbook api to develop the application for sync the Yahoo address book records with my PC Outlook or my mobile phone? thanks a lot in advance.

Posted by: Chunrong Chen at October 8, 2008 1:16 AM

@Chunrong, yes it is possible to develop applications for sync with the Yahoo Address Book, however you will need to apply for write access to the Address Book. Obtaining write access is an application process. Details are available at: http://developer.yahoo.com/addressbook

Posted by: Charles at October 8, 2008 9:26 AM