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June 7, 2010

Yahoo! Accelerates Social Momentum

Integrates Facebook Globally Across More than 15 Yahoo! Sites

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jun 07, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Continuing its commitment to be the center of people's online lives, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) today announced new product integrations that continue bringing the best social experiences from across the Web to Yahoo! consumers around the world.

"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 (YDN) 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."

Today's announcement covers:

  • Facebook Integration -- Yahoo! has reached an important milestone in its partnership with Facebook. Starting this week, people who use both Yahoo! and Facebook can link their accounts and view and share updates with friends across both networks. People who connect their accounts can consume their Facebook News Feed on the Yahoo! homepage and in Yahoo! Mail and other Yahoo! sites and services. Additionally, people who create and share content on Yahoo! sites - including Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, Flickr, and many Yahoo! entertainment sites, such as omg!, Yahoo! TV, and Yahoo! Movies - can easily share their actions with friends back on Facebook. Additional integrations will be ongoing.
  • A Refresh of Yahoo! Profiles -- Launched in October 2008, Yahoo! Profiles has allowed people to manage their identity and activities across Yahoo! from a central location. Yahoo! has refreshed the experience to make its privacy settings easier to use and to give people a central dashboard to manage what they share on Yahoo! from the external social accounts and apps that they have linked to Yahoo!, starting with Facebook and with others to come later this year. Yahoo! Profiles has been renamed Yahoo! Pulse to better reflect its broader ability to manage Yahoo! settings, privacy, and account links. The updated experience is available at http://pulse.yahoo.com.

"From news to sports to entertainment, Yahoo! sites provide ideal experiences to share with friends," said Ethan Beard, director of Facebook Developer Network. "By integrating with Facebook on a global scale, Yahoo! is building upon an already valuable brand to give people easy ways to share the content they enjoy on Yahoo! with their friends on Facebook."

Social and Yahoo! - Recent Milestones

Over the last few months, Yahoo! has been weaving the best social experiences from across the Web into the Yahoo! network to create more personally relevant online experiences for consumers worldwide, using its global cloud computing infrastructure. Upcoming and recent milestones include:

  • Zynga Partnership - Later this year, Zynga, the company behind hit social games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars, has agreed to integrate its games into the Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP), making them available to people throughout the Yahoo! network.
  • Koprol Acquisition - The recent acquisition of Koprol extends Yahoo!'s social, mobile, and local offerings and focuses on the intersection of location, community expertise, and mobile experiences.
  • Yahoo! Updates "Firehose" - Earlier this year, the Yahoo! Updates firehose API -- which aggregates social updates from Yahoo! and other sites across the Web and makes them easily available to publishers and developers -- was rolled out.
  • Citizen Sports Acquisition - Strengthening Yahoo!'s overall social strategy, the recent acquisition of Citizen Sports brings the world of sports to Facebook and mobile devices through innovative applications.
  • Facebook Contacts Integration - Yahoo! Mail launched import contact functionality from Facebook into Yahoo! Contacts so people can build a more robust online address book.
  • Facebook "Like button" - Facebook users who visit Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Sports can now easily "like" items such as sports teams or stock quote pages and share those actions with friends on Facebook.
  • Twitter Partnership - Earlier this year, Yahoo! announced a global partnership to integrate Twitter's real-time social experiences across Yahoo!. Yahoo! Search results already draw from the full stream of public tweets, and the broader agreement is scheduled for implementation later this year.
  • Developer & Publisher Solutions - A suite of social APIs and services enable publishers like the Huffington Post and thousands of others to leverage the power of the Y!OS social platform via partnerships with JS-Kit Echo, Meebo, Gigya, Jan-Rain, among others. More information is at http://developer.yahoo.com/publisher.

Yahoo! is deeply committed to privacy - not just as a written policy, but as a fundamental consideration applied to each and every Yahoo! site and service. Yahoo! offers simple controls so that everyone can change who sees their updates, or turn off their updates stream at any time. To find out more, go to Yahoo.com and search for "Yahoo! privacy settings" or visit http://pulse.yahoo.com/y/settings.

About Yahoo!

Yahoo! attracts hundreds of millions of users every month through its innovative technology and engaging content and services, making it one of the most visited Internet destinations and a world-class online media company. Yahoo!'s vision is to be the center of people's online lives by delivering personally relevant, meaningful Internet experiences. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit http://pressroom.yahoo.com or the company's blog, Yodel Anecdotal (http://yodel.yahoo.com).

Yahoo! is the trademark and/or registered trademark of Yahoo! Inc.

Facebook(R) is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.

All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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SOURCE: Yahoo! Inc. 

Yahoo! Corporate Communications
Kryssa Guntrum, 408-349-3351
kryssa@yahoo-inc.com

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