Yahoo announced on Wednesday a partnership with Facebook that would enable the two sites to share certain parts of their streams. In detail, Yahoo users will be able to see their Facebook fiends’ activities on Yahoo. In turn, Yahoo users can share content like ratings, photos and article comments directly onto their Facebook streams.
Once again, news like this shows the power of Facebook Connect and how quickly online communities can grow when leveraging the platform. Yahoo said it would deeply integrate Facebook Connect across Yahoo properties worldwide.
For Yahoo, which gets over 500 million visits per month, this could be an opportunity for it to grow its account signups. Yahoo also has its own social networking features like allowing its users to have profiles, chat, and even customizable avatars.
And for Facebook, it gives it another opportunity to grow beyond its current 350 million users who could potentially sign up from Yahoo, given they already don’t have Facebook accounts.
“Yahoo’s goal is to bring together social experiences from across the web, and provide one place for people to access information and stay in touch with the people they care about most,” said Jim Stoneham, VP of Communities for Yahoo in a blog post. “In the future, you’ll be able to choose where you want to update your status message – from destinations across Yahoo! – or directly on Facebook.”
There’s no money exchange in the five-year deal as of yet, Stoneham told the NYTimes.
Yahoo users should expect to see Facebook integration in the first half of 2010.
