Yahoo Cozies Up to Twitter

Yahoo has announced a partnership with Twitter that includes integrating Twitter content and social features across the Yahoo network.

In a Feb. 23 blog post on the issue, Yvonne French, product manager for Yahoo Social programs, said under the agreement users will be able to view personal Twitter feeds in Yahoo Mail.

"Users who authorize Yahoo will be able to read and update their Twitter feed from Yahoo Mail, the Yahoo homepage and other locations across the Yahoo network," French said. "The Twitter (and Facebook) feeds will be important additions to the rich, diverse Updates feed that Yahoo users already enjoy," she said.

French said public Tweets are already available in Yahoo search results and users will see them appear more frequently, for more of their queries. However, soon users will see topics in Yahoo News, Finance, Sports and Entertainment enhanced with relevant real-time Tweets.

Said French:

"A key driver for this Twitter partnership is to enable Yahoo users to share and stay connected more easily with the people and things they care about across the Web, in keeping with our Yahoo Open Strategy and platform. We announced the first phase of this Social Aggregation Strategy back in December when we outlined our plans to implement Facebook Connect on Yahoo. Adding Twitter to our users’ experiences is the next phase in this strategy and it further expands the power of the Yahoo ID as a single key that gives our users an access token to the best of the Web. Whether they want to check their e-mail, consume media, comment and participate in communities, or follow their Facebook newsfeed and Twitter stream, they can now do all of those things through Yahoo."

Moreover, "With our Twitter integration, Yahoo users will also be able to update their Twitter (and Facebook) status from the Yahoo Homepage and from Yahoo Mail," French said. "Activities that users currently share via Yahoo Updates - such as commenting on an article, rating a movie or creating a Fantasy Sports team – can optionally be broadcast to their Twitter stream as Tweets. Eventually, we will extend this capability to developers, too – if users of your application currently publish their activities to Yahoo Updates, they will have the option to also publish these activities into their Twitter stream."