My curiosity was definitely piqued two weeks ago when Yahoo announced its forthcoming Yahoo 360° service. Part blog, part social networking, the early buzz was encouraging. Borrowing a page from Google's successful Gmail playbook, Yahoo 360° launched in beta this Tuesday by invitation only. Having now received an invitation, let me share my initial impressions.
Overall, Yahoo! has a very promising service here. In some regards, 360 might be viewed as a me-too offering designed to catch up with AOL's Journals, Google's Blogger and MSN's Spaces. While it is true that Yahoo! has been the only major web company without a weblog offering in the US market, 360 is not just another blogging tool. It is also not just another social networking site (of which there are entirely too many and few if any have proved very useful or sustainable at all). So what is Yahoo 360?
The value in Yahoo 360 will be created by its ability to draw on and integrate the best elements of blogging (expression), social networking (connecting) and the vast Yahoo empire (Search, Groups, Photos, Mail, Messenger, Local). In that sense, it really is something new and something that has the potential to become very sticky for people over time.
In her initial review, Forrester's Charlene Li made a key point about what distinguishes 360 from social networking sites:
Central to the whole service is the concept that you want to communicate and connect with the people that you already know, rather than try to meet new people. To this end, your home page on the service shows the most recent content published by people within your network. This might be a blog post, a photo album, review, or an updated profile item. This page is constantly refreshed as the people in your network update the information on their spaces. This fundamental concept of linking people through their updated “stuff” is what makes Yahoo! 360 unique – and inherently will drive usage of the service higher than traditional social networks. In essence, the content is being pushed to you by the service.
As one who has tried nearly every collaboration, communication and social networking solution out there over the years, Yahoo 360 is appealing precisely because of this point. No, it won't cure world hunger, but it does have the potential to enable people to easily stay connected to family and friends while respecting the differing privacy needs of each relationship.
The thought that went into the privacy controls and permissioning are particularly significant in this regard as they provide a greater level of granularity than other existing offerings (which typically only provide for world-readable or password-protected). Friendster fired the author of a fairly well-known paper on the need for semi-permeable blogging last year. It looks like at least Yahoo! gets it. They've already promised post-level privacy options soon.
Other reviews have already hit upon some of the other highlights so I won't repeat them here. Michael Schuermann has a good review here.
Overall, Yahoo! 360 looks very promising.
A very similar product is the open profile at tribe.net, where you can import features outside of tribe. I’ve been asking people in the blogosphere to try it out because one of the featured modules is the weblog feature. You can also increase your blog traffic by importing external blogs into the profile. If anyone wants an invite let me know. sorry if this is an unwanted comment.
profile example here: http://tinyurl.com/6cy6u
Posted by: Eric Jones | May 25, 2005 at 11:42 AM
She cried out of her lips, not going to me square in pain.
Posted by: big | January 12, 2009 at 09:49 AM
She punish me aninvite.
Posted by: kanijkulur | January 25, 2009 at 05:51 PM