Yahoo! Mash

Mash is Yahoo's latest beta project, intended to rival MySpace and Facebook. I thought that Yahoo had the same intention for 360, not that it even came close to living up to that purpose. And 360 still hasn't made it out of the beta stage.

So now that Yahoo is working on Mash, what will become of 360? Will it become an abandoned project, doomed forever to remain in the beta stage? Or will Yahoo pull 360 out of beta and allow it to be what it pretty much has already become -- an extended Yahoo profile with online networking overtones.

One of the reasons 360 never really took off was because Yahoo failed to incorporate into it one of the things that made MySpace such a hit in the first place -- an almost endless ability for personalization. Sure, Yahoo thought about the whole networking thing when they made 360. But what about the ability to add music, videos, games, quizzes, flashy graphic comments, or by simply copying and pasting a little piece of code into one of your profile sections, to completely change the layout of your page so it becomes truly, uniquely you. Yahoo missed the boat in those areas.

But what 360 lacks, Mash promises to deliver... or so it seems. Mash is not only still in its beta testing stage, it is also currently available to the public on an invitation only basis. I managed to get an invite and checked it out. Like MySpace, Mash offers a great deal of customizeability. As of yet, you can't do nearly as much with it as you can with MySpace, but that's because of it's currently small user base. And let's face it... what enables people to so greatly personalize their MySpace profiles is due largely to third parties creating all those extras and making them available to MySpace users via external websites. Mash doesn't have all these third party designers and developers yet. Most people don't even know about it yet. But I believe that Mash offers an equal or greater potential for personalization compared to MySpace.

Rather than requiring users to search out third party websites for their personalization needs, Mash offers it all right on the Mash website in the form of modules that anybody can create... much like you find on Google's personal home pages. And also like on Google's personalized homes, you can simply drag and drop your modules to rearrange your layout. So there's no need for searching out code to add to your profile when you want to rearrange or completely remove a section, like on MySpace.

Another major difference is the ability for users other than the profile's "owner" to modify the profile. On MySpace, your friends can leave text, graphics, videos, etc. as comments which are then added to your profile. On Mash, by default, there's the ability for anybody at all to do anything at all to your profile... or at least anything that you yourself would be able to do. But you are able to change your settings so that rather than anyone being able to edit your profile, only your friends will have the ability... or you can turn off the feature all together so that nobody but yourself can make changes. It's up to you whether you want your profile to be yours or whether you want to enable others a wiki-like freedom to contribute to it.

So basically, Y!Mash is kinda like a mash-up of MySpace, Google Personalized homes and a wiki. Yahoo was at the forefront of the internet revolution. It's great to see them finally joining in on the web 2.0 evolution.

If anybody would like an invitation to join Yahoo! Mash, feel free to contact me at pooge0287@yahoo.com, and I'll hook ya up.