Can Yahoo make money on apps?

For all of their ups and downs, one thing that can be said about Yahoo! is that they’re willing to try new things. Some have said that it makes it harder for them to develop a company identity in the post-portal world, but the fact that they’re still alive, kicking, and even relevant in some circles says volumes about their persistence.

Their latest dive: mobile app development and advertising. They held their first mobile app developers conference recently to jumpstart their push of Flurry, a mobile analytics and advertising company that they purchased last year. CEO Marissa Mayer said that they have over 200,000 developers using the tool.

The goal of the conference and their push into apps is to tap into the lucrative mobile advertising model more fully. Web advertising may have come and gone for them, but the mobile advertising world is still wide open. According to PC World:

More than 1,000 people attended the one-day conference, many of them small or independent software developers. Several expressed interest in the new tools, but said they need time to assess how useful they were.