If you haven't kicked your Facebook habit to the curb amid the recent privacy concerns, Yahoo has some good news for you. Starting Monday night, the company began adding new Facebook features to Yahoo Mail. Those who have received the update should be able to see and respond to updates from Facebook's news feed directly from Yahoo's email platform. You should also be able to reply to a Facebook email without going to the site.
These additions come as Yahoo, Google and others attempt to keep up with the bolstering social network scene. Last year, Yahoo rolled out a feature that funneled updates from popular social sites like Twitter and Flickr into Yahoo Mail. Google recently followed suit with Buzz, a service that lets users share status updates, photos, videos, and RSS information, in addition to integrating with external sites like Twitter, Flickr, and Picasa.
Neither service has been a hit, but Yahoo is determined to find its role in the social craze. Rather than constructing its own core infrastructure, the company plans to rely on partnerships to aggregate content. In a related move, the company has teamed up with Match.com and will ditch its own service, Yahoo Personals. This follows its decision to drop HotJobs, GeoCities and other services conflicting with the company's core focus: email, search, and its homepage.
