Yahoo to buy into social media?

Jake Widman
Friday, 22 May 2009 00:43

Your IT - Home IT

Continuing its efforts to position itself as still a player on the Net, Yahoo said it may acquire companies that will help it move into social networking.

Speaking to the Reuters Global Technology Summit, Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh said his company had been discussing partnerships and other, "more interesting" possibilities.

"It's a good time to be buying now," he said, citing lower valuations today compared to several months ago.

"I can guarantee you there will be some acquisitions, and we will do some stuff in-house," he continued.

He said that Yahoo's existing user base gives the company a strong foundation to build a social network on by adding on "tuck-ins" of other companies' products.

He also said the company plans to introduce status update-type features for Yahoo users.

This comes as Yahoo has explicitly ceded the "10 blue links" style of searching to Google and is attempting to deliver more useful, targeted search results .

It also comes amidst reports from the Wall Street Journal that talks with Microsoft, which restarted last month, are foundering again on the same "social issues" that were a problem last year. Specifically, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer continues to bring up issues that the Yahoo team thought were already settled.