Yahoo improves Facebook links

Yahoo has increased its integration with Facebook, allowing users to view their Facebook news feed on Yahoo Mail and the Yahoo home page.

From this week, users can link their accounts and view and share updates across both networks. Content created on Yahoo sites such as Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, Flickr and Yahoo entertainment sites can beshared on Facebook.

“More and more, people rely on social sites to share and discover information that matters to them, making Yahoo! uniquely positioned to provide people with all of the mainstream methods of content discovery – social, search, communications, and editorial,” said Cody Simms, senior director of social platforms and Yahoo developer network at Yahoo.

“Starting with Facebook, we are bringing all of these elements together to give people one simple, trusted place to share information and connect. We think this offers great benefit to people across the web, and it’s key to helping Yahoo! extend our reach and increase engagement.”

The company has also revamped its Profiles service, which allows users to post information about themselves and conenct with other users.

The company says it’s made its privacy settings easier to use and has added a central dashboard called Facebook Pulse to manage external social networking accounts, starting with Facebook. Others will be added later this year.

The announcement is Yahoo’s latest step in its attempt to focus more on social networking. Earlier this year, the company updated its firehose API, aggregating social updates from Yahoo and other sites.

Earlier this year, the company announced plans to integrate Twitter across Yahoo, and Farmville creator Zynga is to integrate its games into the Yahoo Application Platform later this year.