As expected, Yahoo launched its Inbox 2.0 beta today at a press event in San Francisco. Since I am not part of the beta program, I haven’t actually seen the service just yet — though I got some cute screenshots. The company trotted out three applications including a Flixster and a Xoopit application to show off this new social mailbox, as we reported last week. Yahoo also launched three apps of its own — Flickr, Yahoo Greetings and Family Journal.
On their developer blog, Mark Risher, Director, Product Management at Yahoo! Mail wrote: “Because of the sensitivity of the information in people’s inboxes, we’re adding developers gradually while we refine the application security and privacy protections our Yahoo! Mail users demand.” I am optimistic about this Yahoo effort. As I wrote in my previous post, “Yahoo has an unique opportunity with this platform. In particular, it plays to Yahoo’s strength in making complex technologies simple for a mass market audience, a trick Google is still struggling to master.” Yahoo is also making some changes to some of its other services such as Yahoo TV and Yahoo Music as well.
Are you allowed to share those screenshots, Om?
wow, another widget platform. other than fb, none of these have amounted to a hill of beans. where are all the konfabulator widgets? google igadgets? apple dashboard widgets? or how about opensocial, does anyone care about that angle either?