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Yahoo Makes Big Mobile Push

Like most Web giants, Yahoo is sparing no expense to curry favor with mobile developers.

This week alone, the company hosted hundreds of developers at a Mobile Developer Conference in New York City.

The meeting followed Yahoo’s first such event, back in February, and was immediately preceded by its first Mobile Hackathon, when more than 200 hackers spent the day finding creative hacks using Yahoo App Publishing, Tumblr API and Yahoo Search In-Apps. Sweetening the deal for mobile developers, Yahoo said it would now help them integrate native video ads into their apps.

Also this week, the Web giant launched Tumblr In-App Sharing. On Yahoo’s popular social network, the new feature is essentially a share button for mobile apps.

As the exclusive launch partner, mobile photo editor PicsArt is letting users share photos and collages directly from its app onto Tumblr. “This integration will help users drive discovery,” Wilson Kriegel, chief revenue officer and general manager of U.S. operations for PicsArt.

Flurry -- the mobile analytics firm that Yahoo bought last year for around $200 million -- also had good news to share. Its Analytics service is now in 720,000 apps across two billion mobile devices, Flurry announced.

As if that were not enough, Yahoo also announced a partnership with Girls Who Code. Per the pairing, Yahoo has collaborated to design a curriculum based on APIs available through Yahoo's Developer Network, which is expected to roll out to around 500 Girls Who Code clubs, next month.

Both Tumblr and Flickr, meanwhile, are slated to host student project demos next spring.

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