Yahoo! will begin integrating Facebook’s news feed into its core services today, in a bid to position itself as the “largest social network” in the world, according to its UK chief.
The partnership with Facebook is a commercial one, but Mark Rabe, Yahoo!’s
managing director of UK and Ireland, declined to give any financial details.
Later this week, people around the world who use both Yahoo! properties,
such as Mail, and Facebook, will be able to link their accounts and view and
share updates with friends across both networks. Addtionally people who are
creating content on Yahoo!-owned sites, such as the photo-sharing site
Flickr, will be able to easily share these details with their Facebook
network.
Rabe said Yahoo! was already the “the largest social network in the world” in
terms of its 600 million monthly unique users, but so far the company had
not done enough to unite the activity going on across the various social
sites the company owns – such as Delicious, the social bookmarking service
and Flickr.
“We like to think we have the largest social network in the world. We have 80
million monthly unique users in Europe alone. We are now in the process of
stitching all of that activity together.
“Partnerships with companies such as Facebook, are intended to help our users
be as social as they want – without needing to leave the Yahoo!
environment.”
He said that the main difference between Facebook and Yahoo! was the “content
offering” Yahoo! provides. “We want to ensure users can share Yahoo!’s
content with their Facebook friends, and soon Twitter followers, as
seamlessly as possible,” he added.
Yahoo! users will be able to see the Facebook news feed on their personalised
Yahoo! home page – which the company relaunched last year.
A similar arrangement is already in place with Twitter – but has yet to go live. Yahoo! signed a deal with Twitter to index its tweets to make its search results more real-time in February and further integration is expected imminently.
Yahoo! has also launched Yahoo! Pulse, which is a dashboard feature that allows people to manage their privacy settings across any external social networks or apps linking to Yahoo!. It will replace the Yahoo! Profiles service – which previously allowed people to manage their identity and activities across Yahoo! properties from a central location.
Last week Yahoo! announced an upgrade to its Yahoo! updates system, which users have two weeks to opt out of. It will open up people’s email address book and allows their regular email contacts to see any of their activities across Yahoo! sites, such as posting a photos on Flickr, if the user has their settings switched to public.
Rabe believes that Yahoo! Pulse’s functionality will avoid incurring users’ wrath and causing a privacy row, similar to that which occurred when Google launched Buzz.
He refused to be drawn on Google Buzz’s shortcomings, saying: “I don’t want to talk about different companies’ activities in this space, but we at Yahoo! priorities privacy and think Pulse offers a comprehensive set of tools to manage your online identity efficiently.”
A similar arrangement is already in place with Twitter – but has yet to go live. Yahoo! signed a deal with Twitter to index its tweets to make its search results more real-time in February and further integration is expected imminently.
Yahoo! has also launched Yahoo! Pulse, which is a dashboard feature that allows people to manage their privacy settings across any external social networks or apps linking to Yahoo!. It will replace the Yahoo! Profiles service – which previously allowed people to manage their identity and activities across Yahoo! properties from a central location.
Last week Yahoo! announced an upgrade to its Yahoo! updates system, which users have two weeks to opt out of. It will open up people’s email address book and allows their regular email contacts to see any of their activities across Yahoo! sites, such as posting a photos on Flickr, if the user has their settings switched to public.
Rabe believes that Yahoo! Pulse’s functionality will avoid incurring users’ wrath and causing a privacy row, similar to that which occurred when Google launched Buzz.
He refused to be drawn on Google Buzz’s shortcomings, saying: “I don’t want to talk about different companies’ activities in this space, but we at Yahoo! priorities privacy and think Pulse offers a comprehensive set of tools to manage your online identity efficiently.”
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