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Yahoo Announces Limited- Access Release Of Beta Test Version Of New Social Networking Site
New site will allow users to create online profiles, track profiles of friends
September 18, 2007—Yahoo Inc. has announced the by-invitation-only release of a new social networking site, Mash. Still in its beta phase, Mash, which is allows users to create customized online profiles, track online friends, and perform other actions which mirror those available in MySpace and Facebook.
The popularity of sites like Facebook and MySpace has prompted many search engines, businesses, software developers, and others to rethink the way that they have, and will continue to market certain products and services over the past few years.
In a blog post Monday, Will Aldrich, head of the development team responsible for the new site, highlighted some of the features of the new social networking site, including the ability to customize other user profiles, and create additional profiles that only certain users have access to.
“Mash is still pretty raw,” Aldrich adds towards the end of the post, “there are bugs and we haven’t gotten to several of the features it really should have.”
Among some of the other features of Mash is a the ability for users to post photos and RSS news feeds, and “Pulse,” which sends out what Arrington describes as “twitter-like messages,” and report all of the activities performed by a user’s friends while logged into the site.
Aldrich did not say whether this new social networking site will replace Yahoo 360, which has seen a sharp drop in both popularity and usage recently, and does not appear on the list of the top ten social networking sites, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. MySpace Inc, which is owned by News Corp, tops the list with 60.3 million unique visitors reported for the month of August alone.
Still, both Aldrich, and Yahoo Inc, appear optimistic towards the new venture. According to data released last week by Nielsen/Net Ratings, Yahoo trailed both Microsoft Corp and Google Inc in terms of Internet traffic for the month of August. Microsoft had 118 million unique visitors, Google 116, and Yahoo 110, according to the most recent data available.
Yahoo’s more successful social bookmarking sites, such as the widely successful Delicious, and the photo-sharing site Flickr, have allowed the company to maintain a stable, if not growing Internet presence.
Yahoo Inc’s announcement of the limited release of the beta test version of Mash comes at the same time as a report from the New York Times that MySpace Inc has launched what it describes as a “massive data mining operation,” with the goal of more finely targeted ads, which may, reports the paper, allow the company to nearly double its monthly revenue—an increase that would result in $40-$70 million dollars per month.
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