Nearly 5 years ago, I joined Yahoo! to work on its “Front Doors” effort: a re-imagining of its starting points (i.e. Yahoo.com, Yahoo! Search, My Yahoo!, and Yahoo! Toolbar). My work inside since has woven through several products and teams, but there is a consistent theme: working on products and platforms that expand the capabilities of both developers and anyone on the Web.

I intentionally list developers first, as I strongly believe developer-friendly products encourage significant innovation on top of Web products… which, in turn, greatly benefit everyone else (who get features and support for niches that no product could conceivably support on its own).

I am happy to announce, after significant time and effort from a great crew of present (and past) talent at Yahoo!, we now support Apps built by 3rd-party developers (i.e. people who don’t work for Yahoo!) on the Yahoo! Homepage. What this means is you can now add just about any type of content and functionality to the Web’s most popular starting experience.

More than a dozen of these Apps can be found right now by clicking the “+ Add” link next to “My Favorites” on Yahoo.com. From managing your money with recently-acquired-by-Intuit Mint.com, to checking out the weekly ads for Target stores, to puzzle-solving games with Flood-It!: there is an App to suit your interests.

Disagree? Get started building one today… there’s no fees (although you can make money inside your App as you like), no complex SDK (write your code the way you prefer on your server), and no obtuse App Store approval process (instantly share your App with millions and/or promote it using Yahoo!’s in-product App galleries).

To do this, the Yahoo! Developer Network lets you:

• learn more about YAP (our App development platform),
• get up and building an App, and
• create/manage your Apps.

Let me know your experience with these Open Apps on Yahoo.com… I’m excited to see my team’s work see such a large online audience, but I’m also equally exciting about adding even more support and features for developers soon.

Update: TechCrunch has just covered the release of the Mint.com App (and others) on Yahoo.com.