Virtual Goods News

This week the Internet services company Yahoo redesigned its Web home page, Yahoo.com, for the first time since 2006. The new design features support for the Yahoo Application Platform, a software platform that allow users to install third-party apps to Yahoo.com in much the same way one can install apps on Facebook. According to Yahoo Director of Product Developer Xavier Legros, these third-party apps will be able to monetize both through display ads and by microtransaction sale of virtual goods. 

Yahoo previously allowed third parties to build apps for its My Yahoo custom start pages and this week introduced many of those apps for installation at Yahoo.com. Legros stated that Yahoo was working to make more monetization options besides virtual goods and ads available to developers soon, suggesting that in the future the Yahoo Application Platform might support paid apps or display ad alternatives like ad offers. 

Yahoo.com is in theory as excellent a platform for third-party software as Facebook. Yahoo.com attracts roughly 330 million visitors per month from a worldwide audience. Roughly 100 million of those users are located in the lucrative US market, where Yahoo.com is frequently set as a default start page in Web browsers. In practice, it's too soon to tell if users will gravitate to using software through Yahoo.com instead of a social network profile. Much of the success of Yahoo's platform may ultimately rest on whether or not social games begin to thrive there. 

[via paidContent]