14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo’s plans to implement social features into each and every one of its online properties is going forward with the announcement that My Yahoo personalized homepage now offers Facebook and Twitter integration. In fact, this marks the debut of the Yahoo Updates feature in My Yahoo. Users will be able to add widgets for Facebook or Twitter or even the entire stream provided by Updates.
“If you are one of the millions of people that checks multiple social sites daily to stay on top of what’s going on, we have some fantastic news for you. Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo! Updates have come to My Yahoo!,” Yahoo announced in a blog post.
“Historically, My Yahoo! has been anti-social. It’s been your own personal sanctuary… your filter on the world… a place for your interests and passions devoid of any tweets and status updates or any likes and commenting. Until now,” the announcement added.
The three new widgets are now available for My Yahoo users. You can search for them, if you like, or you can go directly to the Facebook app, the Twitter app or the Yahoo Updates app to install them.
The widgets are pretty compelling. With the Facebook app for example, you can check out the News Feed but also your Profile, Friends and Events. And you can update your status on Facebook from My Yahoo. The same is true for the Twitter widget, you can see the full feed or check your private messages and you can even do a Twitter search.
Yahoo has abandoned all plans to build its own social services and has been slowly integrating Facebook and, to a lesser degree, Twitter into its products in the last year. Key to the strategy is Yahoo Updates - a service that enables users to aggregate status updates and activities from a number of social networks and other sites as well as post updates on Yahoo, Twitter or Facebook.