Comments on: Yahoo opens address book interface

Seeking to make its inner workings a part of the fabric of the Internet, Yahoo is opening the interface to its address book.

[WeCanDoBIZ]

Whether these guys consider their APIs to be open or not, grabbing your contacts from any of the webmail providers, including LinkedIn, AOL and Yahoo!, has been a possibility for sometime. We do it on our own site.

For an example take a look at the below (you'll need to register):

https://www.wecando.biz/pilot/my_contacts.php?page=2

Any registered user to our site can display their contacts and send them mail from our site, with the contacts imported from any of the major webmail vendors. What they think they are announcing that's special or new I have no idea.

And I find the notion of social graphn "theft" curious given that surely the social graph belongs to the user who is thus entitled to use it how they wish.

Ian Hendry
WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

[Shankland]

Does the user really own his or her social graph? I think it's debatable. I agree that I "own" my list of contacts, but what about the next level out, my contacts' contacts? I don't own those. Quickly it becomes an exercise in collective ownership when looking at the value of interconnectedness. Whether that means Yahoo or some corporate entity that maintains the graph owns them is another matter, but I don't think I own my graph beyond the first level out.

For the record, Yahoo's Yeh said he believes the users own their social graphs: "We think the user owns the data, not Microsoft or Yahoo or Google."

[benjaminstraight]

This should make certain apps easier.

[Username8365]

I wouldn't trust Yahoo! or Google to store the list of my contacts. The best solution I found is the Breesko Address Book. That's where I store my contacts and I know they are stored on my disk, so non of ad companies have access to that.

[WeCanDoBIZ]

I just wanted to update the link I mentioned above as it has changed since. You can now find our address book grabber which works with Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, Google Mail and LinkedIn at

https://www.wecando.biz/my_contacts.php?page=2

It takes 30 seconds to register so you can see how it works.

Thanks all for your interest!

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz