Sunnyvale, California — Struggling internet pioneer Yahoo over the weekend bolstered up its integration of U.S. Edition of Yahoo News with the launch of a completely novel and social way to consume news by including the ability for users to automatically share with friends the articles they are reading on Yahoo site.
The new Yahoo News Activity feature, release of which corresponds with the launch of the new Facebook Open Graph push, is an attempt to infuse social segment into the news curation and discovery process.
Yahoo, which made the announcement in conjunction with Facebook’s F8 developer conference on Thursday, expects the tie-up to motivate more Facebook users to Yahoo News, said Jonathan Katzman, a director of product management at Yahoo.
The new Yahoo News component, which is also an opt-in feature, presents a small “facebar” that provides a glimpse into what articles your friends on Facebook are reading on Yahoo News. It also posts recent Yahoo News articles you have read to your Facebook profile, the company said in news delivered at Facebook’s F8 conference in San Francisco last week.
“Yahoo has always had amazing content and amazing editorial ability,” Katzman says. “Now users can discover the content through their friends.”
Yahoo is now empowering users with the option to link up their Facebook accounts to Yahoo News and share their reading activity. Once you connect, articles you read will show up on Yahoo and in your Facebook news feed.
“Hear about the news from a trusted source — your friends,” Yahoo said.
“We will get a lot more visibility for Yahoo News on Facebook,” Katzman said.
Another expected advantage for Yahoo is to have visitors spend more time and become more involved on Yahoo News. “This is going to make you feel you are surrounded by your Facebook friends on Yahoo News,” he added.
Adding this social element to the Yahoo News experience complements the site’s editorial activities, in which Yahoo editors manually organize content, and its automated personalization features, which customizes content automatically based on certain criterion, Katzman said.
Once a user opts into the service (via the new Facebook permissions screen), they will be able to view what news stories their friends have read on both Facebook and Yahoo News. To activate, go to Yahoo News and select the Facebook button to log-in. Click “add to timeline” and you will see friends who have also joined. Click their photos and a drop-down menu will display recently read articles.
In case you fail to remember that your reading activity is being broadcast on Facebook and Yahoo, the service will remind you when you just shared an article. Users can easily erase any articles from the list of recent items read from both Yahoo and Facebook. For instance, if you do not wish everyone to know you just read an article about Justin Bieber’s favorite flavor of ice cream, go to “My Activity” and click the red “x” next to that article. It will be removed from your Yahoo and Facebook timelines.
Meanwhile, Yahoo has made it easy to turn sharing on and off. You can easily turn sharing off completely if you want to read in private, and switch it back on when you are ready to share. When sharing is off, your friends’ faces will be grayed out and you would not be able to see their activity until you re-activate.
“People have been sharing links to news articles with friends on Facebook for years, and today Yahoo is deepening its Facebook association to make social news even more seamless,” Ethan Beard, director platform partnerships at Facebook, said in a statement. “Using our new features, Yahoo is customizing the news experience for readers, and giving them new ways to express their favorite Yahoo content on their Facebook profile, and discover more relevant news though friends.”
The essence of the Yahoo News-Facebook consolidation is the “facebar,” a row of your friends’ faces that is displayed above any article you read. Clicking on any of these faces will bring up their recent activity. There is also now a “You on Yahoo News” widget that sits to the right of the content (see image above). This widget enables you to view a history of what you have read and gives you options for removing different stories from your Yahoo News feed and turning the social features off altogether.
Yahoo News Activity feature enables people to easily share what they are reading on Facebook and Yahoo News. (Credit: Yahoo)
“Through our seamless integration with Facebook, we are promoting your friends to the status of social editors on Yahoo, making it simple to let your friends guide you to more stories, shows, and information than ever before,” said Blake Irving, chief product officer at Yahoo.
This new Facebook incorporation into Yahoo News is simple, but it is just the beginning for what the the company has planned. Facebook is about to become a whole lot more prominent on Yahoo.