Social Networking bug has bitten an entire generation and the latest to go for a share of this big pie is web-giant ‘Yahoo!’. ‘Yahoo! Pulse’ aims to aggregate all your social netwoking into one place by bringing in updates from social networking sites. That said, currently Pulse only has option to link with your Facebook account that is associated with your Yahoo! account. According to the Yahoo! PR, Twitter would follow soon. This is similar to Google Buzz, but Yahoo! Pulse has definitely got more up its sleeve. Further, the lack of Facebook integration on Buzz would be a definite plus for Pulse.
We found the interface of the site quite usable. After logging in, we reached a page very similar to Facebook, with similar updates and the option to ‘like’ or ‘comment’ on posts. It was actually our Yahoo! network, and not our Facebook contacts. Only after checking the settings did we actually link our Facebook account to Pulse. So, you can have two separate networks for your Facebook and Yahoo! accounts, each with its own tab. A combined tab also shows in updates from all networks . Now, as we said, you can link only the accounts associated with the respective Yahoo! account. Now that is turn off and a potential detractor from this service. Even if a person uses a Gmail account to log onto Facebook, the lure of all social networks in one place would have lured the user to Yahoo!. This has further significance when Yahoo! does know that it needs to pull back some traffic.
Facebook integration brings your entire social world of Facebook to Pulse. You probably would never need to visit your Facebook page again as you can view, like, comment, post and even use apps from Yahoo!. This is where Pulse is different from Buzz. Yahoo!’s apps are independent of the apps you find on Facebook, making it one of the first major web portals to join the ‘Apps’ bandwagon. As the company is targeting Facebook users, so it was imperative that they ensure that people don’t miss out on the fun, so the popular game, ‘Mafia Wars’, by Zygna, is already on the list of Yahoo! apps. Farmville would follow the suite. There is also a mobile App to view all your updates on the go. Now, bring the other networks, and more Apps in, and Yahoo! is sure to get back some of its lost followers.