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For a company that sought to buy Facebook sometime back, Yahoo seems quite eager to get a part of the action that Facebook seems to be riding on. Moving ahead from an earlier deal that allowed users to import contacts from Facebook, Yahoo now allows you to update your status directly from the Yahoo ‘What’s new?’ page.
Labeled Yahoo Pulse, this change to Yahoo also includes an overhaul of its basic interface to accommodate feeds and updates from your friends. Henceforth, any updates to a Yahoo service you use, such as Flickr, will be shown on your friends’ walls as a Facebook update. This also benefits from the recent privacy modifications implemented by Facebook and Yahoo has proposed a few changes to its own privacy framework to make sure that there isn’t a severe public backlash like the one that pushed Google Buzz out of the limelight.
The biggest reason to cheer will be for Yahoo users who also play one of Zynga’s many games. Reports state that a deal has been struck between the two and the latter’s most famous titles, including the phenomenally successful Farmville, will be available to Yahoo users, without even leaving the Yahoo page.
Having made it abundantly clear that Yahoo aims to draw some of the crowd that is willing to satisfy its Facebook craving from within their Yahoo homepage, it now seeks to regain some of the ground lost to the social networking giant. Already known for its early integration that allowed users to check their Facebook and Twitter updates from the Yahoo frontpage, these steps show Yahoo making as much as possible out of the lost deal that would have brought Facebook under its name. Jumping on the bandwagon might not be so bad; After all, reclaiming even a small percentage of the enormous numbers that Facebook boasts will serve Yahoo well.
Combined with its careful observation of Buzz’s failures and the changes made after the outcry against Facebook’s dismal privacy settings, Yahoo Pulse has the potential to satisfy some users. In the worst case, it will at least prevent users from leaving the mails service for Facebook.