Yahoo is deepening its connections with Facebook and plans to enable Facebook users to share more of their activities on Yahoo's websites, including which stories they are reading.
Yahoo's news activity feature will be extended to 26 additional Yahoo sites worldwide, including U.S.-based entertainment experiences omg, Yahoo TV, Yahoo Movies, and Yahoo Games. A new social feature, Notifications, has also launched in the U.S., alerting people to social conversations and activity across Yahoo.
Yahoo claims that since launching the Yahoo News friends' activity feature, more than 12 million people have opted in, increasing referrals from Facebook to Yaho! News and bringing a younger (ages 18?34) audience of socially engaged people to the No. 1 online news destination.
"As the world's most popular online news destination, Yahoo! News delivers the most compelling content on the Web through a combination of local editors, advanced technologies, and now, your friends," said Blake Irving, chief product officer, Yahoo!. "In just three months, we've seen traffic from Facebook to Yahoo! News in the U.S. increase by 300%, so we?re excited to extend this social activation to more of our worldwide content sites."
By opting-in to the news activity feature, users can show what they're reading on Yahoo with their Facebook friends. People's activity will be featured on their Facebook profiles as it happens. Users can easily turn it it on and off and delete items.
A new "facebar" at the top of integrated Yahoo pages shows a person's Facebook friends and what they're reading on Yahoo.
A new social feature, Notifications, builds upon the Yahoo News friends' activity feature and further encourages social discovery and navigation of content through the lens of people's friends. The Notifications feature alerts people to social conversations and other activity on Yahoo that interest them such as feedback on reviews, responses to comments, and stock alerts. Notifications is found on the top of most pages on Yahoo, such as Yahoo News, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Sports, omg, Shine, and Yahoo Travel.