The Download Blog

Updated September 17, 2008, at 8:03 am PT.

Yahoo's OneConnect for iPhone is a strange compilation. More complicated in construct than an instant messenger application, OneConnect has worked in elements of social networking and contact management, to mixed results. We CNET Editors have found its content-loading and refreshing laggy, its social networking capabilities limited, and its ideas about storing and managing messages and contacts odd. Yet, OneConnect has potential as a broader communications application, and it's refreshing to see an iPhone application that attempts to create something new rather than simply pare down a pre-existing online service.

There are five screen views in Yahoo OneConnect, most whose functions connect to one other. For instance, you need to the add social networks you'd like to monitor in the Settings window before you can view them in Pulse. The best way to hold a conversation in the Message window is to start it in the Contacts window, though you'll have to go through an additional page of contact information in order to begin chatting.

Not all that intertwining is bad. As with the desktop version of Messenger, you can turn OneConnect into a beefed-up address book that can place calls and send e-mails and SMS messages as well as it can an instant message--provided you have already added additional information or don't mind doing so for the greater good of your Yahoo account.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

There are some nice design elements with OneConnect's chatting, in particular the emoticon button that lets you drop emoticons, URLs, or photos into the chat, and a landscape mode that shows chat bubbles with your avatars as a backdrop. However, OneConnect requires you to make an all-new avatar for you and a friend instead of pulling in ones you've already made, and there's no button to clear all the contents of the message window after conversations pile up.

From the social networking perspective, OneConnect is a diet formula. It will give a diligent readout of status updates and photos, and will in turn let you update your status to any or all your social networks. However, unless your Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, or Bebo companion is also a Yahoo pal, you'll have to be content to passively absorb their stories, or else leave the application to respond.

I stand by my previous assertion that OneConnect would be better off opening its application to multiple networks to gain users before the other guys fill up the market (Palringo is the only multinetwork player on our radar.) Otherwise, the social networking portion is too flimsy to attract proactive networkers, which leaves the IM portion too overdone to be its most useful and the address book components too secondary and duplicating to drive the application forward.

Despite these flaws, I'll also stand by Yahoo OneConnect's potential and general appeal. If Yahoo can work out the kinks, it could make something of the communications application. I'm not convinced that simply reproducing social network feeds is the way to go, but if Yahoo can elegantly work social network updates, IM, e-mail, and phone numbers into a user's profile, this application could command some strong attention.

Yahoo has gotten into the curious habit of releasing a preview version of a mobile app every six months at the CTIA mobility conference. This time around, it's OneConnect for iPhone and iPod Touch, an application that Yahoo hopes will showcase what it's calling its open mobile strategy. In layman's terms, OneConnect is an application that integrates your Yahoo IM account with your social networking accounts and also your iPhone contacts and camera.

(Credit: Yahoo)

OneConnect is following the herd of any number of iPhone application developers offering to post status updates and messages to various social networks, including Flickr, MySpace, and Twitter. However, Yahoo's effort contains some useful features that, along with its established base of Messenger users, could gain it traction in the competitive world of popular iPhone applications.

I got a close look at OneConnect in a sit-down with Yahoo Mobile's communications crew that builds on my colleague Stephen Shankland's coverage of the keynote speech given by Yahoo's Marco Boerries, Executive Vice President of Connected Life.

In its preview form, the social application has three drives: updating photos and a status message to select social networks, sending free IM and SMS messages to contacts via an IP-based protocol, and souping up the device's address book to show the contact's Yahoo presence and stage interactions with them if they're online.

I'm reserving final judgment until OneConnect becomes available from the iTunes App Store, but based on the demo: so far, so good. Yahoo has rightly carried over from its PC-based Messenger and Yahoo Mail a communications feature that sends a text instead of an instant message when a contact is offline. The IM experience is richer than the SMS, of course, with emoticons and an area for quickly inserting URLs, but that's no detriment to the SMS capability. By hooking SMS to the Internet, Yahoo can offer its brand of texting free of charge to iPhone and iPod Touch users. That's a notable advantage to the latter group--since the iPod Touch is not a phone, those users wouldn't otherwise be able to send text messages at all.

Also promising is the favorites feature, a shortcut that lets you surface certain contact details in the application's contact list, like a buddy's cell phone number, so you can send a text or place a call with a tap. There are also a few cosmetic enhancements that add visual luster, but no functional advantage. When you turn to landscape mode from the messaging view, for instance, your avatar and your friends' avatar communicate via speech bubbles. You'll also be able to dress up a pal's avatar for use on your phone.

As a very early preview, Yahoo's OneConnect is off to a good start, and the iPhone platform has been a good choice for quickly and easily sharing Yahoo's vision of integration. While Yahoo's representatives dodged questions of a time line, it's likely we won't be seeing OneConnect in its full glory on other mobile platforms anytime soon.

We hope that we will see OneConnect add other instant messaging protocols, which would round it out as a full-featured social app. This is Yahoo's stated goal, but another dodge to the time line question and a lengthy explanation of Yahoo's difficulty in integrating Windows Live Messenger contacts into Yahoo's desktop messenger suggests that the addition of more networks could be a long time coming. If that's the case, Yahoo users may continue to use an all-in-one IM iPhone application such as Palringo to reach the sum of their friends, and use OneConnect for its other social updating features.

At CTIA 2008 in Las Vegas, Yahoo unveiled three new cell phone apps that have been cooking in Yahoo's kitchen. We got a taste of all of them. There's Yahoo oneSearch 2.0 (hands-on review), which has debuted on selective BlackBerrys with a new feature to search for any term you speak or type.

Then there's a dynamic bookmarking feature, Yahoo onePlace, which focuses on managing your interests. In addition to bookmarking search results, like a flight number, it will also import sites you've previously starred on GoogleReader and Digg, and will develop a predictive search that adapts to your search preferences. My favorite feature lets you sort links into collections, for instance, all links pertaining to an upcoming trip or birthday party.

Taking a detour from search-related items is oneConnect, which, similar to Digsby, puts your instant messenger, Twitter, and social network contacts into one place, but on your cell phone. The integration of SMS and e-mail capabilities from your smartphone makes it possible to seamlessly carry on conversations when a buddy's logged off IM.

Yahoo expects to release all three products as widgets for its all-in-one mobile content app, Yahoo Go 3 (reviewed) over the next few months, but each should also be available as a standalone app for users who prefer their Yahoo a la carte.