Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Yahoo Decides to Friend Facebook

Yahoo Inc. watched as social-networking website Facebook Inc. stole the attention of users and grabbed a major share of the online-advertising market.

Now, according to Amir Efrati at wsj.com,  the Internet pioneer is following an old mantra: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

After struggling for years to develop services that compete with the social network, Yahoo in recent months has installed tools such as Facebook's "Like" and "Share" buttons on its news and sports websites in order to help Yahoo users share articles with their contacts on Facebook, among other things.

Yahoo, like other content providers, is seeking to leverage Facebook's huge user base to draw more traffic back to Yahoo after readers click on the sharing buttons. The moves also are aimed at ensuring that links to Yahoo content appear in the search feature on Facebook's site. Yahoo is using similar approaches with Twitter Inc., the Internet messaging service, and Zynga Game Network Inc., which offers online social games.

Yahoo hopes the moves will solve one of its biggest problems—a 10% slide in the time users collectively spent per month on Yahoo sites last year, according to research firm comScore. Yahoo's internal research shows the main culprit for the slide is Facebook, people familiar with the matter said.

Read more here.

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