Continuing efforts to bring more services into its online properties, Yahoo is now letting customers update their Facebook status from within Yahoo Mail.
Yahoo will start to roll out the capability on Monday evening in “select markets,” it said in a blog post, though it didn’t specify which ones.
To use the feature, customers must first link their Yahoo and Facebook accounts. They can do that by clicking “add to Facebook” in the status section of Yahoo Mail’s What’s New page and signing in with their Facebook credentials.
Once the accounts are linked, users can type a message in a status box that appears in Yahoo Mail and choose to post it on Facebook, on Yahoo or both. If they choose to post it on Yahoo, the status message shows up on their contacts’ What’s New page in Yahoo Mail.
The integration also displays people’s Facebook profile photos within Yahoo e-mails. Clicking on the profile picture takes the recipient of the mail to that person’s Facebook page.
Yahoo said in the blog post that the Facebook integration is just the start of what the company plans to add to Yahoo Mail. Last month it let people import Facebook friends’ e-mail addresses to Yahoo Contacts.
The changes are being introduced using the Facebook Connect program.