As Facebook gets bigger and bigger, it makes more and more sense for people and businesses to establish profiles on the site; there’s no telling what sorts of interesting and potentially profitable connections they’ll make as a result.  And now Yahoo’s taken a step that could well supercharge the process.

From this point forward, when a Facebook profile is included in a standard list of Yahoo search results, it’ll come complete with options for the searcher to poke and message the person.  Searchers will be able to add folks as friends and view their existing pals, as well.

The mere presence of all those extra buttons is likely to attract a few eyeballs.  The convenience they bring is also liable to make more interactions occur.  The only hitch - and it’s a relatively small and obvious one - is that Google, not Yahoo, dominates the search market, so this change might not have an enormous effect.

Otherwise, everything looks hunky dory.  SearchMonkey technology made the development possible, and since it’s Yahoo’s hot new thing, CEO Carol Bartz will probably leave it alone even as she reorganizes the entire company.  Also, Facebook approves of and actually helped make the adjustment, so don’t expect to see Mark Zuckerberg complain or file a lawsuit.

Two last noteworthy things mentioned on the Yahoo Search Blog: “We care about privacy as much as you do, so you’ll only see results for Facebook users who have enabled their profiles to be publicly searched and viewed.  If you’re interested in ’social-izing’ your search results page further, check out other SearchMonkey apps for social networking sites such as StumbleUpon, Delicious, and MyBlogLog.”

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