• TechCrunch et al., Monday, June 7, 2010 1:58 PM

Yahoo's new social strategy has arrived, and it is Facebook -- literally. The Web portal on Monday is expected to relaunch its Yahoo Profiles platform -- now named Yahoo Pulse -- and its "all in" integration with Facebook Connect, including on the Yahoo home page.

"We've all known deep integration with Facebook was coming, but until now it wasn't clear exactly how deeply Yahoo would go," writes TechCrunch. "The answer -- pretty deep."

Indeed, users can now log into Facebook directly from Yahoo's home page, along with 15 other Yahoo properties, including Yahoo Mail. From comments to status updates, various interactions on Yahoo now give users the option of sending that data directly along to Facebook.

Oh, how the times have changed. As The Los Angeles Times writes: "Yahoo, which once tried to buy Facebook, wants its properties to become more social [i.e., more like Facebook] to entice its hundreds of millions of users who mostly check news or e-mail to keep visiting and spend more time there."

Under the brutal headline, "Yahoo hollows itself out further with Facebook deal," Social Beat writes: "The issue is it's increasingly hard to see what Yahoo uniquely offers to its audience ... Signing a deeper agreement with Facebook ultimately may be a stopgap measure as its users defect to other destinations."

Social Beat also notes the fact that Facebook overtook Yahoo as the leading display advertising network earlier this year.

Still, by marrying its own experience with the Web's hottest property, "Yahoo could experience a significant traffic surge," PCWorld admits. "But," it asks, "Is it enough for Yahoo to gain market share? And how much Facebook is too much?"

"As far as picking a direction, going 'all in' on Facebook isn't that bad of a choice for the flailing company," writes ReadWriteWeb. "Creating a social and news dashboard application out of Yahoo.com is a decent choice for the company -- After all, that's what Google is doing with Buzz and let's not forget that social aggregator FriendFeed did OK before being bought up by Facebook."

Actually, that last point makes us wonder: Is Yahoo, which once preyed on Facebook as an acquisition target, destined to become the social network's prey?

Read the whole story at TechCrunch et al. »