Yahoo is jumping on the Twitter bandwagon in its latest attempt to improve its Internet search engine and lure back some of its dwindling audience.
Beginning Thursday, Yahoo will mine the short messages posted on Twitter to find fresher information about hot topics. It follows a similar move by Microsoft Corp.
(Msnbc.com is a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC Universal.)
The addition comes at a pivotal time for Yahoo. The company, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is bogged down in a three-year financial slump partly because it has losing ground in the lucrative Internet search market to Google and Microsoft.
Google also plans to include Twitter's chatter in its search results, but has yet to say when that change will occur. Both Microsoft and Google announced their Twitter deals last month.