Yahoo is getting ready to unwrap a new service, Yahoo 360, blending several standard Yahoo features with blogging and social networking, on March 29.
The company announced the new service last week after details were leaked to news outlets. They had been testing it among a small group of company workers tied to the project since it began under the code name Mingle last year.
Yahoo hopes the new service will let its 165 million registered users pull content from the site's discussion groups, online photo albums, and review sections, to plug into their own blogs. And they also hope the new service makes it easier for Yahoo users to tie to others sharing their own interests and common friends, either by opening their blogs to the whole Yahoo world or restrict access to those they invite through e-mail, Yahoo said March 18.
"We heard from people that they have a strong desire to stay close to the people who are important to them," said vice president of network products Julie Herendeen to reporters, "but at the same time they didn't want to feel like they were exposing themselves online." said Julie Herendeen, Yahoo's vice president of network products.
Yahoo also hopes the 360 service encourages its most frequent visitors to make and share more content and thus help attract even more Netizens to Yahoo. But while Yahoo is joining Google, MSN, and Ask Jeeves in getting involved in the blog movement, other analysts think Yahoo might have a hard time catching up to established networking sites—even with its deep pocket advantage of $3.5 billion in cash and short term investments at 2004's end.
