02 December 2009 | Author: L. Sutherland News Editor

Yahoo! and Facebook get a little friendlier

Real-time results are proving to have real currency when it comes to our favourite search engines this year, with Bing and Google battling to show they can be up to the minute, every minute. And with news that Yahoo! and Facebook are getting friendlier, it seems that the veteran search engine is following suit.

Yahoo! and Facebook are to announce an extended partnership that will see the social network and search engine allowing users to combine their activity streams, the New York Times reports. This means that, for users of both services, the Yahoo! Updates tab that sits on sites like Yahoo Sports, News and Finance can carry info from friend's Facebook activities while the networking site will have the chance to share some of Yahoo!'s content on the site.

Yahoo! hopes that the ability to connect with Facebook Friends on Yahoo! and share comments on Flickr or Yahoo! news stories on Facebook, will create a mutually beneficial loop between the two sites - so no money is changing hands. Instead, it's a partnership that relies on sharing traffic and enjoying the combined reach of both websites.

The driving force behind this social make-over for Yahoo! is the Yahoo! Open Strategy, a plan to revitalise the ailing engine and make it appear more personally relevant for its users. According to Kara Swisher for All Things Digital, Cody Simms, senior director of product management for Yahoo's open strategy, said: "This relationship pushes us really far forward [toward openness].

"And it helps our users be more social, which they want to be wherever they are."

The changes are expected to come into play in 2010, whether they will prove enough to improve Yahoo!'s rankings we probably won't find out for a while yet.