In a press conference held on Monday in San Francisco, Yahoo announced a new Yahoo! Open Strategy (Y! OS) initiative by the company, which is aimed at making its technologies more open to external developers and integrating social networking features into its services. A major part of this announcement referred to Yahoo mail, the Internet's most popular web-based mail service. Among the features, we can find the new “smarter inbox”, which allows users to float messages to the top of the queue from their designated, most important contacts.

Furthermore, Yahoo mail now offers third-party developers the chance to incorporate applications. Early beta test apps include ones from Flixter, WordPress and Xoopit. It looks like Yahoo is now providing new opportunities for publishers, developers and advertisers, as they will be able to reach and connect with more than half of the world's online population. Another interesting feature of Y! OS is the new “universal profile” page, where users can control their identity, activities, interests and connections. Basically, the profile info can be shared with other Yahoo services, like Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Toolbar, Yahoo Music, Yahoo TV, Yahoo Travel and with external sites such as Twitter.

Other improvements include My Yahoo and Yahoo Toolbar. My Yahoo will get the ability to run third-party apps or gadgets, such as the Flixster app, where friends can share interest in movies. As for the Yahoo Toolbar, this will let users check for email from Yahoo and other services, find eBay deals or see contacts' status updates. The toolbar will be available later this week for Internet Explorer users only. The social and open features will be merged into one Yahoo Mail experience in the first half of 2009.