Sunnyvale, California — Continuing its penetration into the social-networking realm, and its announced partnership with Facebook, Internet pioneer Yahoo Inc. will soon introduce new ways to view content from Facebook Inc. across its websites, according to people briefed on the matter, as it aims to prevent Yahoo users from defecting to the social network, according to the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
As part of a partnership with Facebook announced last December, Yahoo will begin allowing users to view their stream of Facebook updates — which Facebook designates as “news feed” — from Yahoo.com and Yahoo Mail, these people said.
Facebook and Yahoo are allowing users to link their accounts between the world’s leading social networking hub and the pioneering online enterprise that is re-inventing itself after being obscured by Google in online search.
“More and more, people rely on social networks to share and discover information that matters to them,” said Yahoo senior director of social platforms and developer network Cody Simms.
“We are bringing all of these attributes together to give people one simple, trusted place to share information and connect.”
The Journal also mentioned that the changes to be rolled out shortly mean users of Yahoo sites will be able to more easily see the actions they take on those sites mirrored on Facebook as well–for instance, posting pictures on Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site Flickr and seeing those shots appear on Facebook.
In addition, the Journal reported, Yahoo will fine-tune its Yahoo Profiles service. Profiles is a social-networking-like service configured to let users post information about themselves and connect with other users. Yahoo Pulse, as the service will be titled, will offer tabs for different social networks, initially allowing users to swap between consuming updates, such as links to articles friends have read, from their Yahoo and Facebook networks, these people said.
The new features should be made available “In coming days,” the Journal said. Yahoo plans to incorporate other social networks too, they added. Pulse also will include a new privacy menu that allows users to control who sees updates from which services, they said.
Yahoo! is absolutely resolute on charting out a new niche for itself by turning its globally popular properties such as free Web email, news, sports and Flickr into the center of people’s online lives.
The more time people pass at Yahoo! websites the more opportunities the company has to make money on advertising.
“We think this offers great benefit to users across the Web, and it is the key to helping Yahoo! extend our reach and increase engagement,” Simms said of the alliance with Facebook, which is based in nearby Palo Alto, California.
Early this year, Yahoo! announced a global partnership to integrate Twitter’s real-time social experiences across Yahoo!. And just last month, the Sunnyvale, Calif. company has forged alliances with social-gaming company Zynga. It also acquired Indonesian company Koprol, which lets people share their location with other users from mobile phones.
Yahoo’s attempts could benefit Facebook, which is continuing its campaign to get more sites to connect to its service. The social network, which is approaching 500 million users, is striving to further broaden its offering from a destination to a set of tools users can access anywhere on the Web.
YHOO closed Friday’s regular trade at $15.00, down $0.43 or 2.79%, on 23.61 million shares.