Yahoo oneConnect Puts Media in Address Book

Yahoo's oneConnect technology aims to re-invent mobile communication by making the address book the center of mobile messaging, media sharing, and social networking.

Undaunted by the flurry of speculation surrounding Microsoft’s efforts to acquire the company, Yahoo today announced oneConnect, a new mobile communications application that aims to make the mobile address book the center of all mobile messaging, social networking, and mobile media sharing. Built using an open architecture, Yahoo oneConnect will embrace messaging and sharing tools from other platforms—including things like Google Talk and AIM—and the company even plans to develop versions for Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry platform.

Yahoo oneConnect will feature integrated mobile messaging, pulling together IM and SMS into seamless, threaded conversations. oneConnect will also enable users to see their friends’ most recent status updates from a wide range of social networking services (including MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Dopplr, Bebo, Flickr, LinkedIn, Last.fm, and others) and a Pulse feature will provide an overview of what their friends are up to, including recent photos, status updates, and recommendations based on their activity on social networking services. oneConnect will also enable users to collect information about a contact (including messages, pulse items, and more) into a “social contact card,”, and location-sensing technology will enable users to chat with and exchange information with nearby oneConnect users.

Yahoo says the service will be able to run on the majority of mass-market mobile phones available around the world. oneConnect should launch in the second quarter of 2008 as part of the Yahoo Go 3.0 mobile application set.