Yahoo! shuts! failed! social! networking! site!!

Never! out! of! beta!

By John Oates • Get more from this author

Posted in Applications, 1st June 2009 09:16 GMT

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Yahoo! is shutting its unloved social networking site, Yahoo! 360, next month.

The closure follows the shuttering of services Y! 360 aimed at college graduates and Mash, two other networking efforts opened in 2007 and then quietly closed. Yahoo! believes its family of services already provides social networking functions, but the company has singularly failed to deal with the success of the likes of Facebook.

An update page on the site, said: "Today, we’re able to firmly say that on July 13, 2009 Yahoo! 360° will be closing down and you’ll be asked to move into your new profile on Yahoo!, by July 12, 2009." This means that users will need to get cracking moving blog and other content across.

Yahoo said it will help users to either move their content to another blogging service or to Yahoo!'s profile. Yahoo! wants to use members' user profiles as the basis for social networking type services across its various sites.

The blog also asks the obvious question: "First you shut down Mash, now you shut down 360 — why should I give profiles a shot?". We're told Yahoo! is listening to these worries.

Yahoo!'s profiles don't currently have all the functions of 360, but will get improved over time.

The whole post is here. ®

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