Yahoo homepage news gets pithy by adding 140-character tweets

Yahoo, under the direction of Marissa Mayer - who has been CEO for 10 months today - continues to get with the times by adding tweets to the newsfeed of its recently redesigned homepage.

"140 characters can connect athletes with their fans, capture live chatter from the red carpet, and inspire global debate," said Mayer in a blog post entitled "@yahoo delivers #bestoftheweb."

"As users explore our nearly endless stream of content, we will seamlessly include relevant and personalized Tweets alongside stories from Yahoo! and our other sources."

Yahoo's partnership with Twitter means that visitors will see updates directly from politicians, celebrities, and other media outlets straight from the notable Twitter accounts.

Bringing Facebook, Twitter together

In addition to seeing tweets appear in Yahoo's endlessly scrolling newsfeed, Twitter users will be able to reply to, retweet, and favorite these messages directly from the Yahoo homepage.

This Twitter integration joins Yahoo's existing Facebook "social activity" features such as listing the stories - usually ones with embarrassing headlines - that social networking friends have read.

Today's deal with Twitter is the second nail in the rumor coffin regarding a Yahoo/Facebook partnership on a search product.

The first indication came when Facebook introduced its own Graph Search in January.

Yahoo-Twitter roll out

While Yahoo's deals with Twitter and Facebook will bring the two rival networkings onto its increasingly social search portal, tweets haven't appeared within the newsfeed just yet.

"This integration will roll out to all U.S. desktop and mobile web users over the next few days," Mayer said in her announcement.

The shaking-things-up CEO closed her post by asking users for feedback on its most recent decision as the new Yahoo, but the link didn't work - a sign that the old Yahoo hasn't been completely expunged.

Matt Swider