Yahoo punches up pages with Facebook
People who use both Facebook and Yahoo will be able to link those accounts and share updates and messages across platforms thanks to a major redesign rolled out by Yahoo on Monday.
It's all part of a move by Yahoo -- and other established online players like Google and Hotmail -- to get more social and further integrate with other sites. In February, Yahoo announced a similar integration deal with Twitter.
"As the place that 600 million people visit every month, Yahoo! is in a unique position to bring together different social experiences from across the Web to a single place," read a post on the official Yahoo! Yodel Anecdotal blog.
The blog said the Facebook integration is part of an ongoing plan "to rewire Yahoo! to be more open and social."
On the main Yahoo page Monday morning, users were able to click a Facebook icon on the left of the page to link the two accounts. Then, with another click, they could set the icon for "QuickView," which makes a Facebook news feed appear when the user scrolls over that icon.
Similar functions work on Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo News and entertainment sites like omg! and Yahoo Music.
The integration plan is the second with a major social media player that Yahoo has created in recent months.
Yahoo and the microblogging site Twitter announced a plan to allow real-time tweets to be shared with the 600 million users in Yahoo's global network.
That partnership lets people access their Twitter feeds on Yahoo properties, including their home pages, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Sports and others, making it easier to tweet or check on the people they follow.
Users are able to update their Twitter status from Yahoo sites and share content from Yahoo in their Twitter stream.
In the blog post on the Facebook integration, Yahoo also said it would be ramping up privacy controls.
A central dashboard, called Yahoo Pulse, lets users manage their information and privacy settings in one spot.
Facebook came under fire in recent weeks for privacy changes that defaulted many user settings to public and, according to many users, made it difficult to change those settings back to private.
The ultra-popular networking site eventually revamped the settings, letting users revert to all-private with a handful of clicks.
Facebook had not issued a statement or posted on its official blog acknowledging the Yahoo announcement as of mid-morning on Monday.
