Yahoo on Facebook gets ‘persistent state of sharing’ with new sites and notifications

Yahoo is expanding its integration with Facebook by adding 26 sites to Facebook’s Open Graph sharing network. In addition to Yahoo News, users who opt into Facebook’s “frictionless sharing” will now automatically share stories they read on international Yahoo sites and subsites like Yahoo Movies or TV. Given that Yahoo’s current offerings make up 30 percent of Open Graph’s top 40 shared links — and traffic from Facebook to Yahoo News in the US has increased 300 percent since the service launched — it’s not exactly a surprise that the company wants to bring a few more sites into the fold.

Yahoo has also added a comprehensive notification tool that alerts users in the US to changes that might affect them (like a substantial drop in one of their stocks) or to their friends’ activities across different Yahoo sites. It’s a feature the head of social and personalization calls “low hanging fruit.” He’s also not concerned that the automatic sharing feature will stop people from clicking links out of potential embarrassment, telling TechCrunch that “The younger demographic is totally comfortable with a persistent state of sharing. People should be comfortable as themselves.” With the fourth most popular link on Open Graph the CNN tabloid piece “Parents, don’t dress your girls like tramps,” we’re not sure this comfort is limited to youngsters.