• Read Write Web, Thursday, March 5, 2009 11:30 AM

Yahoo Updates, Yahoo's answer to Facebook Connect, is now available on more than 600,000 Web sites. And unlike Facebook, which is still wrapped up in a privacy debate over who controls its data, Yahoo is implementing open standards in its system, for which Read Write Web's Marshall Kirkpatrick applauds the Web giant. As part of the launch, Yahoo is also partnering with JS-Kit, a service that powers comments and ratings on a variety of sites, from AOL and Sun Microsystems to tiny little guys you would have never heard of.

As Kirkpatrick says, the vision for Yahoo Updates is the same as Facebook Connect: By allowing readers to authenticate themselves with a trusted third-party site, they will be more likely to post comments and interact with their site. In turn, this gives site owners access to valuable, verified information about their readers.

Kirkpatrick calls the Yahoo Updates user experience "immediately quite usable and full-featured," but "the only question is whether the giant company will move fast enough" to compete with Facebook, which has stolen Yahoo's thunder in releasing Facebook Connect first. Indeed, whereas "Yahoo has been talking about 'opening up' and integrating social data across its sites for months, Facebook tends to be much, much faster at taking action and innovating."

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