A new service called Yahoo Pulse will one-up Google Buzz by offering privacy tools and integration with Facebook news feeds on the Yahoo home page, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The Pulse site will behave a bit like Threadsy or the desktop appTweetDeck, aggregating real-time updates from Facebook alongside other social networks.

Yahoo has been trying for months to make itself the ultimate starting page for Internet users; you can already view your Facebook and Twitter feeds using Yahoo’s “Quick View” feature, but Yahoo Pulse will provide an improved, tabbed interface and offer new kinds of integrations in Yahoo and Yahoo Mail.

Notably, Yahoo Pulse will have a privacy menu that will apply to multiple services. That feature will be an important draw for some users, given that Facebook has dealt with a big privacy backlash in recent weeks. Just don’t expect it to add completely new privacy features to your Facebook account.

The privacy angle is also pertinent when you consider that Google — Yahoo’s chief rival — made some major privacy errors that greatly hindered the launch of Google Buzz, a very similar service. Those faux pas and the lack of Facebook integration prevented Buzz from becoming a killer application. Pulse is Yahoo’s answer to Buzz; maybe it learned from its rival’s mistakes.

The specifics of the new interface and integrations have not yet been revealed, but it’s all expected to launch within a few days. We’re curious to hear what kinds of integrations with Facebook Yahoo users would like to see, so let us know in the comments.

In an effort to address mounting criticism of the privacy issues surrounding Google Buzz, the search giant is going to ask all Buzz users to confirm or change their privacy settings tomorrow.

In an announcement that will be coming soon, Google will admit that they “didn’t get everything right,” which has resulted in serious privacy tweaks since its launch. However, many users weren’t affected by these changes because they had activatedGoogle Buzz before the privacy updates.

Now in a renewed effort to correct its gaffs, the search company is going to ask all Google Buzz users to confirm (or change) their Buzz settings. This will be gradually rolled out tomorrow, but the result will be that every user will be prompted with a confirmation page the next time they click the Buzz tab.

It will look something like this:

The page isn’t anything new — it’s really just the Google Buzz settings page. However, Google’s taking a step in the right direction by giving every user a big opportunity to change their privacy settings. It had to be done.

While tomorrow’s move won’t fix the damage that has already been done, perhaps it’ll help get Congress off of its back. If it can appease critics on the privacy issues, then it can tackle the bigger challenge: making Google Buzz into a competitive threat to Twitter and Facebook.