It’s About the Apps, Stupid

Both the CNET “Outside the Lines” blog post on Yahoo working to reinvent itself and the CNET blog Webware, on shortcomings in Twitter apps, are making a larger point that it’s all about developers, coders. Yahoo, the first piece makes clear, is keying itself up to let developers write code to bring various forms of Yahoo! to the masses. “We are rewiring Yahoo from the inside out with a developer platform that will open up the assets of Yahoo in a way never done before, making the consumer experience social throughout and provide hooks to developers,” says Yahoo’s CTO at the Web 2.0 Expo. (One of the apps pictured, showing what customized Yahoo Mail is supposed to look like, looks so much like Facebook.)



Webware’s Rafe Needleman, meanwhile, argues that Twitter won’t ever take off (and make money) unless it better opens up its API (programming interface) to allow third parties to more seamlessly integrate with it. He came across problems when a bunch of applications he let’s interface with his Twitter account shut it down without warning.

Our new creative class is coders. And they’re leading the consumers.