Images: Yahoo's quest to rewire itself

Yahoo used the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco on Thursday to talk up a new technical architecture that it's calling YOS, or Yahoo Open Strategy--a central part of a plan by the company to rebuild its Web presence from the ground up as a more social and open platform.

"We are not creating another social network," said Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh. "We will rewire the entire experience to make it social. We don't think of social as a destination but as a dimension."

With this new effort, which begins in earnest later this year, the front page of Yahoo, mail and other properties will be transformed--for example, the mail welcome page will surface messages more relevant to users, and the experience will be contextualized.