To support its ongoing Open Strategy, Yahoo announced a handful of new offerings and enhancements:

• Smarter Yahoo! Mail. Thought to be the broadest implementation of its Open Strategy initiative, enhanced Y! Mail "learns" which messages, data and activities users most care about and pushes them to the top. Third-party apps can also be integrated.
• Yahoo! Toolbar (available here) provides access to news and customizable online tasks.
• Yahoo! Updates lets users see what their friends are doing on the the Yahoo network. Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Toolbar, Yahoo! Music, Yahoo! TV, and Yahoo! Travel join a number of other proprietary properties that "share" activity updates.
• My Yahoo!. Like Google's customized homepage, this feature lets users add applications, developed by third parties, to their Yahoo start pages.

Read more about the enhancements at Yahoo's Developer Blog.

Earlier this month, Yahoo announced plans to avail its back-end search infrastructure to programmers that wish to improve their site-specific search engines. TechCrunch was the first to deploy the program, dubbed BOSS.

Rivals are also building more engaging experiences around existing offerings. In November Google incorporated voice and video chat into Gmail, its free email service. And in October, AOL added access to popular social networks in its revamped homepage.

Speaking of social features, Yahoo's recent slew of layoffs were likely the most socially engaging of a layoff-crazed media scene. Online sites covered the departures copiously, both in blogs and on Twitter — sometimes even in real-time — as Yahoo's revolving door turned on 1500 employees.

Media startup Tokbox even parked parked a taco truck outside Yahoo headquarters, waiting to poach desirable ex-laborers.