Yahoo Inc plans to integrate Twitter into its collection of websites, as the company seeks to enhance the appeal of its online properties with popular social networking features.
The partnership will allow web surfers to view the short, 140-character messages created by Twitter users, dubbed Tweets, directly within Yahoo sites as well as to publish their own Twitter messages without leaving Yahoo.
The move, which Yahoo announced late on Tuesday, comes a couple of months after Yahoo announced a similar deal with Facebook, the world's No.1 social networking site.
Earlier this month, Google Inc unveiled a new service dubbed Google Buzz that replicated many of the social networking features that have made services like Twitter and Facebook Internet success stories.
Facebook and Twitter - which said on Monday that users of its service generate more than 50 million Tweets every day - pose an increasing threat to established Internet giants like Yahoo and Google whose businesses depend on selling online ads to large audiences.
In January, Facebook overtook Yahoo to become the second most visited website in the United States, according to a recent report by web analytics firm Compete. A separate study by comScore showed Yahoo maintaining its No.2 rank with roughly 164 million unique U.S. visitors, while Facebook was the No.4 site with 112 visitors, behind third-ranked Microsoft Corp.
Yahoo said that beginning on Tuesday its Internet search engine results will display up-to-the-second Tweets about various topics, matching the so-called "real time search" capabilities that Google and Microsoft announced in their own respective deals with Twitter last year.
Yahoo also plans to display a live stream of Tweets within other online properties including its email service and sites devoted to sports, entertainment and finance later this year.
Yahoo executives said that the company was looking at ways to make Twitter messages relevant to each property, such as by customizing the selection of messages that appear alongside an article about a particular sporting event, for example.
"We believe that the content and context side of things is very unique," Yahoo Vice President of Communities Jim Stoneham told Reuters in an interview.
Yahoo would not comment on any financial terms involved in the deal with Twitter.
According to some media reports, Microsoft and Google paid a combined $25 million for the right to include Twitter data in their search results.
Following news that Microsoft and Amazon have struck a patent-sharing deal, Yahoo has announced a buddy-buddy partnership with Twitter that will provide the Internet pioneer with a bigger window onto the social networking scene while pushing the exposure of the Twitter micro-blogging service.
According to Yahoo, the Twitter partnership will transform Yahoo into a highly customisable social experience that enables both Yahoo and Twitter users to enjoy integrated content without ever having to travel between the two platforms.
“Let me try to capture the enormity of this integration in 140 characters or less,” offered Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president of consumer products at Yahoo, in an obvious nod to the Twitter trend.
“We’re turning the key to the online social universe – you will find the most personally relevant experiences through Yahoo!” he explained. “We’re also simplifying people’s lives by bringing their social worlds – and the world – together for easy access.”
(Not including spaces, we make that out to be 197 characters, Bryan.)
Pedantry aside, the deal will enable Yahoo users to access their Twitter feeds through the Yahoo homepage, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Sports and other Yahoo properties.
Similarly, Twitter users will be able to share content from Yahoo through their Twitter streams, and Yahoo Search and Yahoo Media properties (i.e., News Finance, Entertainment, and more) will include real-time public Twitter updates.
“The information in one single tweet can travel light years farther with this Yahoo integration,”
Yahoo’s deal with Twitter comes hot on the heels of a similar content-sharing arrangement it forged with leading social network Facebook back in December of 2009.
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