FT Chronicle

Yahoo! announced a partnership with Facebook, a social networking site on Wednesday which will enable users of Yahoo to share content with their friends through their Facebook account.

Visitors of Yahoo!’s homepage will see a full “news feed” of Facebook activities and also, can leave comments in Yahoo! articles by their Facebook account and send content from Yahoo sites to Facebook.

Yahoo hopes to achieve two goals with the partnership, says Cody Simms, senior director of product management: “Making Yahoo stickier and helping syndicate content.”

Yahoo hopes each time users send photos, comments, and other content back to their Facebook feed, it will entice onlookers to click through to Yahoo sites.

“You’re seeing the beginning of a move toward that consolidation,” says Josh Bernoff, who follows social media in his role as senior vice president of idea development at Forrester Research. “Strategically, Yahoo understands that allying itself with the most powerful social network is going to be more successful than trying to win with an ID of its own,” he says.

The Yahoo-Facebook alliance may deal the strongest blow to OpenID, a movement to create a non-proprietary standard for identity and authentication on the Web.

Some advocates for OpenID challenge the use of Facebook as an ID by millions of Internet users.

The five-year agreement, which includes no financial compensation, will begin to take effect in the first half of 2010.