14 DAY TRIAL // Despite numerous attempts, Yahoo has failed to create a true social experience for its services. Of course, Yahoo Mail is the most popular webmail client in the world and Yahoo Messenger is one of the top instant messengers, but social networking has been a disappointment so far, to the point where it has pretty much given up. In fact, not only is it not trying to compete in the space, it has now launched a wide project to integrate Facebook with most of its big products like Mail and Flickr.
“With this integration, we are opening the door for two of the Internet’s largest online communities to make it easier for people to stay connected,” Jim Stoneham, vice president of Communities for Yahoo, said. “It also enables us to further the Yahoo! Open Strategy, which is aimed at making experiences dramatically more open, social and personally relevant for the more than 500 million people that visit Yahoo! each month.”
Yahoo will integrate Facebook Connect functionality with most of its products, allowing users to connect with their friends from the social network from places like the Yahoo homepage its webmail client. This partnership works both ways and will enable users to get updates from Facebook while they're on a Yahoo page but also to push status updates to the social network from Yahoo.
The two companies already had a basic partnership which allowed Yahoo users to access their Facebook stream through a homepage app. Yahoo also had implemented Facebook share buttons across most of its proprieties, and the partnership enabled Facebook to access Yahoo Contacts to suggest friends to new users. The new five-year deal builds on this and adds more functionality like the possibility to share Flickr photos or news comments on Facebook.
Yahoo says there is no monetary component to the deal and that both companies benefit from the influx of new users from one service to the other. Considering that both companies boast comparable monthly audiences, it only makes sense that they would want to build on each other. Yahoo boasts some 500 million users worldwide for its many proprieties and Facebook has just announced it reached 350 million users. The social network is growing at a very healthy pace and 500 million users is certainly attainable as early as next year, even if the growth rate is bound to slow down at one point.