Yahoo and Twitter partner to mesh the content from both worlds
Yahoo and Twitter have partnered to bring the Twitter stream into Yahoo properties and make it easier to deliver Yahoo content into the Twitter stream.
For some time now, Yahoo has been talking about bringing more of a social element to its various properties that people not only visit regularly but also spend a significant amount of time, such as its Sports, Finance, News and Home page sites.
In a blog post, Yahoo explained that the partnership includes three elements:
- The ability to access personal Twitter feeds from across Yahoo!’s properties
- The ability to update a Twitter status or share content from within Yahoo, directly into the Twitter stream
- The inclusion of relevant, real-time public Twitter updates on Yahoo search and properties such as News, Finance, Entertainment, and Sports.
The partnership, along with a similar deal between Yahoo and Facebook announced in December, brings more of a social presence to Yahoo, which, in turn, could keep people on those Yahoo pages longer.
The move comes on the heels of Google launching its own Twitter-like service, called Buzz, which is incorporated into Gmail. Like Yahoo's integration, users can pull tweets into Buzz. But, unlike Yahoo's offerings, it doesn't allow users to post back to Twitter. In that sense, chalk one up for Yahoo.
Maybe I'm just becoming a grumpy old guy but this announcement, along with Google's Buzz release, is taking something that was already unruly - e-mail - and making it even more clutter. Sure, the integration keeps users from having to jump back and forth from Twitter to Facebook to Mail to get constant updates of what's happening around the Internet. But, personally, I'm also starting to feel like Yahoo, Twitter, Google and everyone else in this space just reached for the noise volume dial and cranked that sucker full-blast.
All I want these days is a mute button, a chance to turn off the noise or keep it out of places where I don't want it - like my inbox. But, alas, the old guy in me is likely going to be disappointed. It sounds like the noise will be following me everywhere I go.
Does anyone have a spare set of earplugs?