Even as Google and Apple are busy focusing on new mobile technologies, Yahoo, one of the oldest search engines and Internet giant, is trying hard to catch up with the changing technology by embedding social networking features into its existing popular services.
The company has tied up with popular social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which will give Yahoo users an option to access their favourite Internet hangouts from their existing Yahoo e-mail accounts.
The new version of Yahoo Profile has been re-named Yahoo Pulse. After this tieup, now Yahoo users will receive updates from Facebook in their inbox, homepages and Yahoo Messenger. At the same time, they may also use Yahoo's mail, content, messenger and other services like Flickr, to share messages with their friends on Facebook.
"This new tie-up is just about giving users what they want. Adding this feature will give Yahoo users a new way to find contents and at the same time keep them updated with their friends," Cody Simms, senior director of social platform, Yahoo! Developer Network, told reporters via video conference.
However, he maintained that the company will still be focusing on its key strength area, which is its content. Simms added while Yahoo Mail still has a large user base, these social-networking sites will make people stick longer to the Yahoo webpage. It will also provide an opportunity to post Yahoo's content on Facebook to attract the latter's users as well as advertisers to their sites.
This will increase the web traffic and add more revenue to the company. "We recognise the future technologies. We have designed it in a way that it will be more mobile-friendly. And people can share and use Yahoo content and updates via mobile," Simms added.
The Facebook feed is already available from Tuesday and the Twitter feed will be available in the coming summer, Yahoo said. However, in view of the content security issue, Yahoo said it has already overhauled its privacy control system. The new privacy control option allows its users to control who gets to see their updates or view the media they put on the web.
Apart from Facebook and Twitter, Yahoo has tied up with social game giant Zynga, which will see hugely popular titles, such as Farmville and Mafia Wars work with its network. The games will be available in late 2010. The company has recently tied up with Citizen Sports to bring other sports from Facebook and mobile devices through innovative applications.
In order to make the new Yahoo version more interesting and popular, Yahoo has signed a multi-million dollar deal with British soccer star David Beckham to tap the FIFA World Cup fever, a move which it says will add many soccer fans to its user base. "The World Cup is an opportunity to drive more people to search, use and talk using Yahoo content so that people can share this fever with their fans," Simms said.
Source:
http://in.news.yahoo.com/248/20100610/1607/ttc-users-say-yahoo-to-twitter-and-faceb.html
No comments:
Post a Comment