Yahoo's Social Platform Dude Talks About Facebook/Twitter Integration and Why Foursquare Is Now Yesterday's News

Yahoo’s VP of Social Platforms, Neal Sample, is a very funny guy, riffing on a wide variety of Silicon Valley companies and topics with an easy sociability.

Well, he kind of has to be that way, given his job as the leader of the Internet giant’s open, social and publishing platforms.

That purview stretches from comments to Answers to status updates and, of course, Yahoo’s recent move to integrate social networks such as Facebook and Twitter deeply into the service.

The Facebook integration was the first to be completed last week, allowing users of both sites to link their accounts and view and share updates with friends across both networks, as well as share “Like” items across both.

Sample talks about this in the video below and manages to get in a funny dig about Yahoo’s recent attempt to buy Foursquare, noting that what the hot social location start-up offers is becoming quickly commoditized.

Sour–but probably entirely correct–grapes!

In any case, Yahoo (YHOO) leadership is hoping it will not get shut out too, by employing the strategy of an all-inclusive hug of every social networking service globally and providing users with a kind of social dashboard that is understandable amid all the noise.

It’s not innovative. But it is also not a bad idea, given how late Yahoo has been to the social party, and–as you will see–Sample makes a pretty good case as to its prospects for success, even compared with Facebook.

Here’s the video of the interview: