Social Networking Watch: News on the Social Networking and Social Media Industry

Yahoo Expands Sharing Of Stories Through Facebook

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - Dec 21 - Yahoo will enable Facebook users to share more of their activities on Yahoo's websites, including which stories they are reading. Yahoo introduced the Facebook-sharing option in its main new section three months ago. The same feature will now be available in 26 other parts of Yahoo's site, including its "omg" service for entertainment news and sections devoted to television, movies and games.

See full article at USA Today

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AOL, Yahoo, And Microsoft Band Together To Fend Off Facebook’s Ad Assault

TECH CRUNCH - Nov 9 - There have been a number of rumors circulating around Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL, most of them focusing on a potential AOL/Yahoo merger, or Yahoo’s acquisition by AOL or Microsoft, etc. Well, it seems the companies have officially become linked, by way of display ads. The agreements will allow each to offer the other’s display ads to their respective customers. This strategic partnership creates somewhat of a mega ad network. It’s also a play to fend off the meteoric rise of Facebook (and, in turn, Google, which owns a 75% share of search advertising).

by Rip Empson
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Google Mulls Buying Yahoo

MASHABLE - Oct 23 - Google is mulling purchasing Yahoo and has contacted at least two venture capital firms to help buy the company’s core business. Google’s not the only one rumored to be interested in buying the troubled Yahoo. Microsoft, which has a 10-year search deal with Yahoo, is also said to be interested.

by Todd Wasserman
See full article at Mashable

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Yahoo Out as Hulu Mulls Other Bids

CNET NEWS - Oct 10 - Currently, Hulu's board of directors is mulling bids from Dish Network, Amazon, and Google. However, Yahoo, which first met with Hulu to discuss a possible acquisition, has backed out of trying to acquire the firm as it prepares to potentially sell off its own company. Dish Network is now the new front-runner to acquire the streaming-video service. The company initially offered $1.9 billion for Hulu but has asked Hulu to change its bid. Google, on the other hand, is willing to pay more than $2 billion, but has required Hulu to agree to certain conditions before it can complete the deal.

by Don Reisinger
See full article at CNet News

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YouTube Founders Buy Yahoo Castoff Delicious

NY TIMES - Sep 19 - YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are trying to inject new life into Delicious, a social bookmarking service that Yahoo was ready to abandon after it failed to build a broad audience. "What we plan to do," Hurley said, "is try to introduce Delicious to the rest of the world." They declined to disclose financial details of the transaction. The revamped service will still resemble the original Delicious when it opens to the public, which would happen this year.

by Jenna Wortham
See full article at The Seattle Times

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AOL Eyes Merger With Yahoo

MASHABLE - Sep 11 - AOL and Yahoo are once again discussing combining the two Internet companies. This development follows the firing of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz earlier this week. While no deal has come to fruition, both companies have continued to face their share of struggles and seen their valuations shrink.

by Adam Ostrow
See full article at Mashable

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Bartz Fired; Morse Named Interim Yahoo CEO

TECH CRUNCH - Sep 7 - Carol Bartz is officially out as the President and CEO of Yahoo. Bartz, who has been in the top role at Yahoo since January 2009, confirmed that she’d been fired by Yahoo’s Chairman of the Board, Roy Bostock, by phone call. Tim Morse, who joined Yahoo from Altera as the company’s new CFO in June, will become Interim CEO as Yahoo searches for a permanent replacement.

by Rip Empson
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Twitter Partners with Yahoo Japan

TECH CRUNCH - June 14 - As part of the partnership Twitter says that “Tweets will be integrated into various services on Yahoo Japan, beginning with real-time results pages. This partnership will allow Twitter content to reach even more users in Japan, one of our biggest international markets.” Twitter also recently struck a deal with NTT DOCOMO, Japan’s largest carrier, to include Tweets and Twitter content in NTT DOCOMO i-mode portal search results.

by Leena Rao
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Hulu Generated 1.1 Billion Video Ad Impressions In Oct

TECH CRUNCH - Nov 15 - According to ComsCore, Hulu saw 1.1 billion video ad impressions in Oct, compared to 793M video ad impressions in Sep. Video ads reached 45% of the total U.S. population an average of 34 times during the month. Whereas Hulu served the highest frequency of ads to its viewers in Sep (~of 27.5 over the course of the month); CWTV.com served served ~50.8 and took the top spot in Oct. Google Sites (whose traffic is mainly YouTube) had 146.3M unique viewers; Yahoo took the second spot again with 53.8M viewers, followed by Viacom Digital, which jumped by 4 positions in October with 52.9M viewers. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Yahoo Mimics Facebook Connect With “Y Connect”

MASHABLE - Oct 18 - Yahoo will soon launch a service called “Y Connect” with features very similar to those of Facebook Connect, portable identity management, integrating Yahoo content on third-party websites, and sharing data about what you’re doing and where with your Yahoo contacts. The service will share info with your contacts through Yahoo Pulse, the Threadsy-like activity stream that Yahoo launched to compete with Google Buzz and other social offerings four months ago. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

Mark Brooks: Facebook Connect has the edge on this functionality, but Yahoo is prolific enough that they could become the second option for logging in to sites. The driving need for this is to have a single login to non-critical, less security sensitive sites. Its a pain having to remember logins to all your social media and content sites. Facebook Connect was a great idea. Where's Google in this fray? They should have hopped on the bandwagon long ago.

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AOL Attempting To Buy Yahoo

MASHABLE - Oct 14 - AOL and several venture capital firms such as Silver Lake Partners and Blackstone Group are in talks to buy Yahoo. Currently, AOL’s market value is around one tenth of Yahoo’s. Neither company is willing to make an official statement at this time. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

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Facebook Passes Yahoo To Become #2 Video Site In U.S.

TECH CRUNCH - Sep 30 - comScore just released its latest online video data in the U.S. for the month of August; showing that viewership remained steady since the previous month. 178M U.S. Internet users watched online video content in August for an average of 14.3 hours per viewer. YouTube.com took the top spot in terms of viewers, with 146.3M unique viewers. Facebook.com jumped one position to capture the #2 spot with 58.6M viewers. Yahoo came in third with 53.9M viewers, followed by VEVO with 45.4M.

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Google Losing Ground As Users Spend More Time On Facebook And Yahoo

READ WRITE WEB - Sep 9 - Americans spent more time socializing on Facebook than searching with Google for the first time in August, and Yahoo edged out the search giant in monthly traffic, according to comScore. Users spent 41.1 billion minutes on Facebook in August, 39.8 billion minutes on Google, and 37.7 billion on Yahoo. Yahoo beat out Google in monthly traffic, with 179M unique visitors to Google's 178.8M. Microsoft came in third with 165.3M. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB

Mark Brooks: And YouTube? I just put money into Google stocks. YouTube will be making a profit soon. And Android? I'm betting they're the tortoise to Apple's hare. I also put money into Apple stocks mind you. I'm bullish on Apple TV.

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Yahoo Seen Close To $100M CafeMom Buy

BUSINESS JOURNAL - Aug 17 - Yahoo is reportedly close to a deal to pay $100M to buy the CafeMom, the social network for mothers. All Things Digital reported that The Walt Disney Co. is also interested in buying the site. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS JOURNAL

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Yahoo Could See 5% Upside From Social Networking

TREFIS - July 28 - Lately, Yahoo has been increasing its focus on social networking functionality, an area where it lags behind market leader Facebook. Trefis, the stock analysis startup, believes that Yahoo’s recent acquisition of Citizen Sports, integration with Facebook, and partnership with the popular social gaming site Zynga will boost traffic and user engagement levels. Trefis expects Yahoo’s monthly unique visitor tally to increase from 560m in 2009 to ~650m by the end of the Trefis forecast period. There could be an upside of 5% to the $18.64 Trefis price estimate for Yahoo’s stock if monthly unique visitors increase to 800M instead of the 650M that they forecast by 2016. FULL ARTICLE @ TREFIS

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Yahoo Goes All In With Facebook

TECH CRUNCH - June 6 - Tomorrow Yahoo will announce a relaunch of Yahoo Profiles and their “all in” integration with Facebook Connect, including on the Yahoo home page. Users will be able to log into Facebook right on the Yahoo home page as well as other places throughout Yahoo, like mail. Most interactions on Yahoo, like leaving comments on stories and status updates in mail and on the home page, will give users the option of posting that content as well to Facebook. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Yahoo To Turn Subscribers' E-mail Contact Lists Into Social Network

WASHINGTON POST - June 1 - Yahoo is jumping into social networking by using its massive population of e-mail subscribers as a base for sharing information on the Web. Over the next few weeks, its 280M e-mail users will be able to exchange comments, pictures and news articles with others in their address books. The program won't expose a user's contact list to the public, as was done by Google through its social networking app, Buzz. But unless a user proactively opts out of the program, those Yahoo e-mail subscribers will automatically be part of a sweeping rollout of features that will incorporate the kinds of sharing done on sites such as Facebook and MySpace. FULL ARTICLE @ WASHINGTON POST

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Zynga Continues To Expand Beyond Facebook

TECH CRUNCH - May 26 - Zynga has announced that it has forged a deal with Yahoo to feature its games throughout Yahoo’s network. Yahoo says that games and/or updates will be available through many of its properties, including the Yahoo Games portal, Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo Messenger. Games will be deployed in the US first, followed by a global rollout. All of this comes just a week after Zynga agreed to enter into a five-year partnership with Facebook. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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