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The Forgotten Yahoo Project That Inspired Two Recently Funded Startups

nickoneill.com

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Re: The Forgotten Yahoo Project That Inspired Two Recently Funded Startups

#21

Post by mikepk »

My first startup played in this space too, Grazr (http://techcrunch.com/2006/09/18/grazr-10-blasts-off-into-th...). We were way ahead of our time too (at least that's what I tell myself :) ). We were mostly known for an opml display widget but our intent was for the OPML to be a format for organizing packages of RSS (this allowed us to have lots of ready sources since feed readers all output OPML).

Instead of a graphical 'pipe building' interface, the way we did mashups was to have embedded scripts in the XML that ran in a server-side JavaScript environment (SpiderMonkey) extended with custom syntax and language extensions we called GrazrScript (and namespaced in the file as tags). You could do some pretty amazing stuff with it by writing small amounts of server-side javascript. We had an interface for http querying, accessing and manipulating normalized feed representations.

You could have these files call other grazrscript files and create 'pipes' of functions (more directly like unix pipes).

I like to tell people we were doing embedded, server-side, javascript years before it was cool. :)

Re: The Forgotten Yahoo Project That Inspired Two Recently Funded Startups

#22

Post by shawnee_ »

sthatipamala wrote: post #5

The problem with Yahoo Pipes was that it was over-optimized for complex dataflows. It was possible to do things like "find all Flickr photos from user, filter by tag and display on a map by location taken". The result was this crazy programming GUI that resembled Labview. In practice, few people needed such complex querying and chaining. I think IFTT has a better metaphor ("if this, then that") which is much simpler…

... over-optimized for complex dataflows

Absolutely.

OSCMS 2007 was hosted at Yahoo!, and it was one of the first developer conferences I made it to after moving to the Bay area. My takeaway from the session on Pipes was that it was a bit ... advanced (at least it was for me at that time). Pipes was not necessarily "forgettable", but it wasn't quite to the place it would induce radical inspiration. The inspiration kinda got lost in the bog of over-engineered complex details.

This seems to be a common trend among Yahoo's many assets: build almost-prototypes of platforms that absolutely ooze potential energy. But then waste that energy by stretching it in too many directions at once, not getting very far.

Re: The Forgotten Yahoo Project That Inspired Two Recently Funded Startups

#23

Post by sneak »

tlrobinson wrote: post #16

The Pipes/IFTTT concept screams for a more open solution, it's too important to be proprietary. I'm always frustrated when I want to use IFTTT but they don't support the services I need. A simple protocol based on HTTP, JSON, and WebHooks could be pretty slick.

It would be nice if someone would make a painfully simple interface (a la the "requests" python module) for doing XMPP.

Perhaps though XMPP is just too much of a quagmire.

Re: The Forgotten Yahoo Project That Inspired Two Recently Funded Startups

#25

Post by spullara »

malandrew wrote: post #10
spullara wrote: post #3

Pipes was way ahead of the curve but is also targeted at a moderately more sophisticated audience than the task triggers IFTTT and Zapier. Pipes focus is more about data collection, filtering and transformation -- like Unix pipes vs cron. BTW, both Pipes and YQL are powered by the same engine and serve billions of requests per day (for both O&O and 3rd parties).

I'd love to hear more about the engine that powers pipes and YQL. Can you tell us more or let me know where we can read more about it?

I'll encourage them to do a blog post on it.

Re: The Forgotten Yahoo Project That Inspired Two Recently Funded Startups

#26

Post by 6ren »

Love the concept, but I found Pipes got very complex to do anything I wanted - a common problem with visual tools.

Zapier solves this by pre-configuring tasks that most people want. Also better times for it, with so many web-apps and web APIs around now.

Re: The Forgotten Yahoo Project That Inspired Two Recently Funded Startups

#27

Post by teaneedz »

sabat wrote: post #8
sthatipamala wrote: post #5

The problem with Yahoo Pipes was that it was over-optimized for complex dataflows. It was possible to do things like "find all Flickr photos from user, filter by tag and display on a map by location taken". The result was this crazy programming GUI that resembled Labview. In practice, few people needed such complex querying and chaining. I think IFTT has a better metaphor ("if this, then that") which is much simpler…

I agree with you that IFTTT and Zapier are simpler solutions to more common needs, but man, Pipes is really powerful. It's more like a language than an automation framework. I don't know if it will ever make any money, but it's a hell of service.

Long before IFTTT, Pipes was an excellent solution for various social media needs.

I recall mashing up RSS feeds and using it to bypass various platform throttles.

It was awesome for fixing wonky feeds.

Love the UNIX metaphore and interface.

Pipes was the only Yahoo! product that really sang to me.

I think I've been relying on IFTTT too much lately. I may have to revisit Pipes.

Re: The Forgotten Yahoo Project That Inspired Two Recently Funded Startups

#28

Post by joshu »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #11

I (and probably sriramk too) am disappointed the article didn't mention Microsoft Popfly: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Popfly Popfly was a more consumer centric mash up tool built by a little skunk works team inside of Microsoft's Developer Division.

Never heard of it. Because it is silverlight, never would have been able to run it. Sounds like it did a lot less according to http://blog.jonudell.net/2008/02/14/popfly-and-pipes/

Lemme guess, you worked on it?

Re: The Forgotten Yahoo Project That Inspired Two Recently Funded Startups

#29

Post by aaronbrethorst »

joshu wrote: post #28
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #11

I (and probably sriramk too) am disappointed the article didn't mention Microsoft Popfly: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Popfly Popfly was a more consumer centric mash up tool built by a little skunk works team inside of Microsoft's Developer Division.

Never heard of it. Because it is silverlight, never would have been able to run it. Sounds like it did a lot less according to http://blog.jonudell.net/2008/02/14/popfly-and-pipes/ Lemme guess, you worked on it?

Of course! No other reason to mention a Microsoft project that's been dead for four years otherwise :)

Re: The Forgotten Yahoo Project That Inspired Two Recently Funded Startups

#30

Post by drgath »

Cherian wrote: post #9

YQL is an amazing piece of technology with robust infrastructure to support it. I was first introduced to it at a Yahoo Hackday in Bangalore and since then I’ve used it to to hack up a lot of small scripts. Like this http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/62104 - one that shows torrents links in Wikipedia movie pages(been couple of years since I updated it) Christian Heilman was the evangelist behind YQL and it gained a…

> Christian was also in the process of writing a book on YQL

Work on that has resumed and "YQL: The Definitive Guide" is due out next year.

> So I am pretty sure it going very strong.

Very much so. 100+ billion queries per month.

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