Yahoo widens integration with Facebook

Yahoo is looking to be a 'one-stop-shop' for the internet

Yahoo has extended its partnership with Facebook to provide deeper integration with the social networking site.

People can now connect their Yahoo and Facebook accounts to view and share updates with friends across both networks.

The integration also means that Facebook news feeds, contacts and 'like' functions can be viewed in the user's same Yahoo homepage and email.

The partnership has now extended integration across more than 15 Yahoo sites, including Answers, Video, Flickr and Music.

Cody Simms, senior director of social platforms and Yahoo Developer Network argued that the integration would help Yahoo extend its reach and improve customer engagement.

“More and more, people rely on social sites to share and discover information that matters to them, making Yahoo uniquely positioned to provide people with all of the mainstream methods of content discovery – social, search, communications, and editorial,” he added.

"Starting with Facebook, we are bringing all of these elements together to give people one simple, trusted place to share information and connect.”

Yahoo has been making up lost ground in the growing social network market. The Facebook integration, announced in April, is similar to the deal struck with Twitter in February.

A refresh of Yahoo Profiles also extends the ability to manage identity, activities and privacy settings across Yahoo from a central location.

Now renamed Yahoo Pulse, the settings dashboard controls what users share through their Yahoo accounts from external social networks and apps, starting with Facebook.

Yahoo also said that it is working to integrate Zynga's popular Farmville and Mafia Wars social games into the Yahoo Application Platform.

Other efforts include an update of the firm's Firehose application programming interface (API) for aggregating social updates, and an API suite aimed at connecting publishers with social networks across the web.