Yahoo Eyes HuffPo for Content Partnership or Acquisition

Yahoo, in its continuing efforts to beef up its content offerings, is hungrily eying the Huffington Post for a content partnership or an outright purchase, though the latter might be too expensive, TechCrunch reports. HuffPo had a $125 million valuation in Dec. 2008, and would want significantly more than that, now.

A partnership would be beneficial to both parties: Yahoo needs top-quality content, while HuffPo could use some more traffic and pageviews, the article points out.

HuffPo is currently the biggest blog online, now covering more than 20 news categories, and successfully uses social media to spread its content across the web. It attracted 26 million unique visitors in April.

Yahoo recently purchased Associated Content to expand its content coverage.

Yahoo Boasts about Content

Yahoo tooted its own horn with a press release today announcing new product integrations which “continue bringing the best social experiences from across the Web to Yahoo! consumers around the world.”

The integrations include:

  —Facebook integration to share content: Yahoo says that beginning this week, people who use both Yahoo and Facebook can link their accounts and view and share updates with friends across both networks. People who connect their accounts can consume their Facebook News Feed on the Yahoo home page and in Yahoo Mail, as well as in other Yahoo sites and services. Additionally, people who create and share content on Yahoo sites, including Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, and Flickr, can share their actions with friends back on Facebook.

  —Zynga partnership: later this year, Yahoo says that Zynga - the company behind social games like Farmville and Mafia Wars - has agreed to integrate its games into the Yahoo Application Platform, making them available to people throughout the Yahoo network.

The new product integrations are part of Yahoo’s continuing commitment to be the center of people’s online lies, the company said.