Facebook shares data with Russian search giant Yandex

Facebook has struck a deal with Russian web giant Yandex, that will see its visitors served relevant real-time public posts from Facebook alongside their usual search results.

As part of the deal, Yandex, will also use Facebook data to help provide more relevant results.
The deal will give Yandex full access to public data from users in Russia, Turkey and CIS countries including Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
The data includes users’ posts and comments on them. Profiles or posts set to “private” will not be searchable.
The deal will boost Facebook’s reach in Russia and its fast-growing web audience, as Yandex accounts for around 60% of all searches in the country. The social network currently trails domestic players in the Russian market and Facebook has been making a push to boost its presence in emerging markets as it looks to sustain the high level of user growth amid growing competition.
Meanhwile, Yandex will boost its social credibility- an area the firm is keen to expand into amid competition from Vkontakte.
“In the near future, Yandex’s search results will display not only Facebook users’ posts but also others’ comments on them,” Yandex said in a statement.
“Users can find out what those on the social network are saying about the current headline news events, for example, or the latest movies. We see one of our key tasks as being the creation of social search services, using content from all the popular social networks in equal measure. This would allow a user to find an old friend without having to register on every single social network one after another,” it added.
Read more from the official Yandex statement here
http://company.yandex.com/press_center/press_releases/2014/2014-01-14.xml