September 14, 2007

Yahoo Invites Us Into Mash, Its New Social Network

Mark Hendrickson

270 comments »

A little more than two months after we first reported rumors about Yahoo’s new social network Mosh, the company has given us a preview of a social network with a slightly different name: Mash.

The service includes features common to Facebook, MySpace, and My Yahoo. You can load a set of modules onto your profile page and move them around drag-and-drop style. The modules include Flickr RSS, Ego Boost, Common Friends, MyMoshLog2, Blog Module (RSS 2.0), Asteroids, Astrology, PimpMyPet, Hover, Kaleidescope, Guestbook, and My Stuff.

The modules gallery also states that “in the coming months we’re going to open up our module development platform to 3rd party developers,” which suggests that Mash will be following in Facebook’s footsteps at least to some extent (it will be interesting to see whether there will be canvas-like pages, too).

Users are encouraged to edit each other’s pages. Each time we visit our profile page, we are seeing new modules that others have loaded for us. This capability certainly adds to the “mashing” aspect of the social network. It is also appears as though Yahoo intends for users to mash their information together from across the company’s various properties, perhaps making Mash the main hub for Yahoo users.

While profile pages appear to have a pretty consistent structural layout (like Facebook), users can customize the design of their pages by changing colors and inserting background images (like MySpace).

Mash also has something called Pulse, which is very similar to Facebook’s news feed. The Pulse page shows “updates from your friends” that are basically Twitter-like messages reporting all of your friends’ activity on Mash.

Unfortunately, it looks like Mash lacks a vital feature of Facebook: search. In the top right of every Mash page there is a search box for regular Yahoo search, but that appears to be it.

Yahoo is calling Mash the next generation of profiles and has plans to roll it out quietly. Mash users can invite their friends into the network, so we’ll be getting a section for Mash up on InviteShare shortly (Update: We have set up an InviteShare page for Mash here). When you invite a friend into Mash, you can create a profile for them that they can choose to adopt or not.

Mash appears to be Yahoo!’s way of saying adieu to its existing social network, Yahoo! 360, but no word yet on whether the company will actually be shutting down 360.

Mash’s blog can be found here.

Additional screen shots:

  • Sphere It

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. Screen Snooze » Blog Archive » Yahoo’s social network is here!
  2. Support this story on Stirrdup
  3. Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin » CNET Rains on Yahoo and TechCrunch 40 Parades
  4. Yahoo pokrenuo svoju drustvenu mrežu - Mash - Đukijev blog
  5. Yahoo! Mash, nueva red social de de Yahoo! @ bloglsia
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  10. Yahoo! Invites Us Into Mash, Its New Social Network « Technology News Network
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Comments

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  1. Masher

    (Dislaimer: I work on Mash, but don’t speak for it officially)

    “On first blush, Mash looks like a cross between Facebook, MySpace, and Netvibes/Pageflakes/My Yahoo!” — it also has a bit of Wiki DNA: anyone you grant permissions to can edit your profile or add modules they think are relevant to your profile. “Mash”-ups are a big inspiration here.

  2. Textbook Case

    Might actually be interesting, I’ll give it a shot probably. Although I already use these so little, MySpace is more just an address book / email whitelist service anymore.

  3. Hmm

    I like the idea of being able to edit others profiles — seems almost like turning the whole profile into a super “wall” or “comment board” — just hope there is privacy/controls in place so people can’t erase all my hard work or put words into my ‘mouth’.

  4. MasherToo

    @Hmm

    Indeed there are privacy controls

    Who can see your profile?

    * Only you
    * Some of my Friends
    o Best Friends
    o Family
    * All Friends
    * Anyone

    Who can edit your profile?

    * Only you
    * Some of my Friends
    o Best Friends
    o Family
    * All Friends
    * Anyone

    Who can post on your guestbook?

    * Only you
    * Some of my Friends
    o Best Friends
    o Family
    * All Friends
    * Anyone

  5. Masher3

    Also if you click the “revision history” link on your profile, you can reject any edit that anyone makes to your profile.

  6. frederico

    clueless….absolutely clueless

  7. Mark Otero

    Can someone please send me an invite to Mash? It’s invite only! My email address is oteromark@yahoo.com. Greatly appreciated. Thanks!

  8. orange

    Another yahoo product with no spark, no joy.

  9. Tom Chi

    Actually, I just got in and its way more awesome than I thought it was going to be.

  10. Shane

    FSB= Spam… shut it down Michael

  11. CakeTrunch

    So it’s in iGoogle page pulling all my relevant feeds with my picture slapped on top? Yahoo!’s truly innovating. The “friends” are no doubt from Yahoo! Messenger.

    Truly awesome step from Yahoo!, the only dilemma I have is whether I should express myself to my friends with Yahoo! 360 or yet another bleak self-portal from Yahoo!

  12. James

    Mike’s yahoo mash picture looks scarier than bozo the clown. He looks like he wants to kill someone or threat someone.

    I hope he doesn’t take picture himself with butcher knife

  13. Marc

    Can some one please send me an invite - very much appriciated: marc@webvogel.de - Thanks

  14. techmine

    Interesting, very Interesting. Finally 360 is going to be replaced by something better. Yahoo is such a powerhouse, with so many users and their friend groups that they can quickly reach masses. Of late they have been little vary with respect to number of products, competing with each other. Hope this is part of consolidation/improvements, they have been trying for. Good Luck to all the Yahooooos!!

  15. Don Wilson

    Feels too Yahooish, and that’s the problem.

  16. Jean-Michel Decombe

    I have not played with it yet but based on the information we have, it seems that they are merely playing catch up with Facebook, at least for now. I have no doubt that there is great and promising technology behind all this, but I would like them to articulate what makes them different and better, otherwise there is no point in leaving the leader of the pack. And nobody really wants to manage multiple identities, at least once the novelty has worn off, unless they are used for radically different purposes (e.g. family and friends vs. business vs. hobby). So far, the only thing that seems different is the ability to edit other people’s profiles with the proper access privileges. Use cases, please? I would think most people would rather be in full charge of their own image, unless they’re dead maybe (e.g. genealogically-oriented social network Ă  la Geni). My 2 cents based on the information I have…

  17. John

    Geez - Nokia has already launched a mobile social networking site called MOSH.

    http://mosh.nokia.com/

  18. R

    Yahoo has a lot of resources available to them.. Couldn’t they pay a research company to come up with a better name than “Mash”??

  19. Elizabeth

    Heard the buzz about Mash and would love an ivite to try it out.

    Currently, I enjoy Yahoo’s 360…….Thanks :)

  20. manfmnantucket

    re Inviteshare - is anyone else surprised to see that they expose in clear text the email addresses of everyone on the waiting list to get an invitation??

    I didn’t think I’d be signing up as spambait…

  21. Chris

    re Inviteshare exposing email address….

    No matter where you go to get an invite you will need to give others your email address. that is why you create a “spam only” email address from Yahoo or Gmail.

    Regarding Mash..please feel free to forward an invite over here freetechzone@gmail.com

  22. Joe Hunkins

    Thx for the heads up Mark - this looks like a good follow up to 360 which IMHO mainly suffered from being too early in the space. If Yahoo can leverage their huge traffic and network sites into a social networking extravaganza they’ll be doing a good thing for users and for Yahoo.

  23. SLaguana

    It’s a lot more fun then I expected.

  24. Marlon

    Sounds useful, especially the wiki apsects. Can someone send me an invite?

    marlon@whiteword.com

  25. Peter

    Glad to see something new coming out of there, but is anyone else fatigued with social networks, too? Do we really need another (does Yahoo need 2 — btw, kill that Yahoo 360 thing already, OK)? Do I have to merge my buddy list over yet again? And really, what’s the gain this time around? So I can edit my profile, and my buddy can, too, but so what? Facebook’s f8 platform is pretty cool, too, but it seems like a novelty that is wearing off. (how many apps can I add, and really, who cares?) What will Mash allow me to do that moves us all forward, and makes this more intrinsic to my online life? I don’t need a wiki. I don’t need a bunch of widgets. I already have all my friends. Looking forward to seeing what’s coming up as it rolls out of beta. I’m sure more ideas are coming, but maybe I’m too old for this stuff. It’s fun, but fun is fleeting.

  26. Anand Nalya

    Waiting for my invitation…

  27. Scott

    Once upon a time the yahoo brand represented all that was exciting and new about the web. mash is uninspired and unoriginal. yahoo, what happened?

  28. saeed

    Waiting for my invitation…

  29. Water Subject

    so is it mosh or mash?

  30. Bashers Batey

    Bring it on! Hope I get an early invite! I am so tired of y360 but really like the Flickr community and what you can do with it. I will be watching YMash very closely and jumping on the bandwagon as soon as possible!

  31. sean

    hello
    could you invite me to mash

    thanks

  32. Hammer

    facebook just lost 50% of its virtual price.
    Keep waiting for the right time to sell, suckerberg

  33. Dominic

    COMING SOON TO A PC NEAR YOU:

    CashNet: need a little $$. Dip right into your friends bank account. They signed up for it so the friend won’t mind.

    GASTRACKER: Now you and your friends can all notify each other when you rip a really bad FART. Isn’t that what friends are for?

  34. Manas Gupta

    Do we need another social network?

  35. Charl

    Looks dull and grey.. no life.

  36. Carl Starrett

    Now it is time to start backing up my nearly 200 blog entries on 360. I really like my 360 page and would rather have seen Yahoo fix the bugs insead of totally scrapping the project. I am wary and will proceed with caution.

  37. Juhani Polkko

    Just signed up - not very impressed yet… It will be an uphill battle against Facebook and only by being more open (like status update APIs) they might be able to beat them in the long run.

    But where’s Google?

  38. Harold

    Please send me one,thanks!

    libing@gmail.com

  39. Behrang

    Can you invite me as well?

    behrangsa_at_yahoo_dot_com

    Thanks.

  40. Sia

    Yahoo!Mash? Interesting choice of name. It sound to me very close to Mashable. I wonder what would happen if the little Mashable decides to sue Yahoo! for copyright infringements. It seems to be a trend these days (I don’t know if you heard about Lulu suing Hulu…

    To be honest I have no reasons to complain about any of Yahoo!’s products so I don’t really see how they can fail now. But what is the point on creating a new social network when they already own so many?

    Isn’t this a bit confusing for the users?

  41. Cassandra

    Yahoo 360 works just fine, and MySpace and Facebook already exist, so why the years-late duplication? Yahoo should have been spending time and $$$ polishing 360, getting the remaining small bugs out, and taking it out of beta.

  42. Panama Real Estate

    Just what we needed, another social network…

  43. Rich White

    Its about time, now if they will just do something with their teachers peer network - http://teachers.yahoo.com

    Rich
    http://rich.greenbush.us

    ======================================

  44. SLaguana

    Everybody dissing it is completely missing the point about why this is so fricking cool, revolutionary even. Obviously you either haven’t used it at all, or you only used it for a minute.
    First of all, this site’s fun level is directly proportional to having actual friends. If you don’t have any friends, and not myspace “friends”, but real honest to goodness friends, you are going to completely miss out on more then half the fun. Rather then just being a number (as in “you have x number of friends”) that can *woohoo* leave a comment, your friends can actually interact with your page. They can put cool modules up, and change your background image, your module colors, and just about everything. They can tease you, compliment you, and amuse you. There’s a surprising amount of pull to this: you want to come back and see what your friends did to your page to fuck with you. And of course you want to fuck with them back.
    Those who are worried about this newfound freedom completely missed all the permission controls, and revision history. You can set your site up to not be messed with, and you can revert it back to a previous version at any time. But you miss out on what is so cool and fun about this in the process. It’s the equivalent of going to a party and locking yourself in a closet.

    Also not mentioned so far is the well placed integration of Ajax into site building. You input what you want to see right where you want to see it. Click on a box and start typing. Hit save and you are done. You never leave the page. That seems like a pretty simple feature, but it makes changing your page surprisingly painless and easy. I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of this.

    Anyways, those of you who aren’t in a position to play with this (no friends?) don’t know what you are missing. I’m not even a fan of social networks and I wound up spending a couple hours screwing around with it last night. Given Yahoo’s ginourmous user base, I think this is going to have legs.

  45. Blake Brannon

    How Innovative! Another Social Site for me to waste more time and complicate my life even more! What a waste of money. Please don’t send me an invite.

  46. Dominic

    B@lake Brannon

    People who get into all this social networking apparently have NO real life.

  47. al gore

    I love Mash. It is definitely Web 3.0. As revolutionary as my invention of teh Internet.

  48. Protect those Emails

    You guys shouldn’t be posting your emails all over this site. Unless you love spam. I would use email warden.

    With that in mind. Please send me an invite:
    rethconwright27773@emailwarden.com

  49. Mad

    I have been using Yahoo 360 for more than a year and I stronly believe that Yahoo should polish it and fix its bugs rather than replace it with another service. There may not be many 360 users but the small comunity that uses it really enjoys the way it is setup.

  50. Big

    UM, it pretty much sucks? “Cute” corporate titans in the web sphere seem to have a hard time pulling this off. Yahoo! 360 2.0 isn’t going to rock the world.

  51. Doug

    I can’t believe people who haven’t even used this early beta version are already bashing it. Keep an open mind. It could actually be very good!

  52. Holly

    I like Yahoo, been using them since about the year 2000 or so as my Homepage and I hope they don’t give up on MASH like some other stuff they have given up on.

    Please send me an invite :

    hollyh_70@yahoo.com

  53. MikE LoOkS Like ScAry MonsTer!

    Forgive me for being innocent sheep. Mike’s image… He is scarest person I ever seen.

    What is difference between Michael Myers and Michael Arrington?

    Ugly man = talent writing
    Ugly man = chain saw

    Anyone here afraid of meeting real life mike arrington on Techcrunch 40?
    I am….

  54. engtech

    Wow, Mash is easily one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen.

    Higher a web designer, Yahoo.

    Pay him 5 million and he’ll do more for you than BuzzTracker.

  55. Adsense threat

    How big monoploy companies steal small ideas?

    Yahoo stole the idea from Digg & Facebook. Their goal was wipe any newly startups. Yahoo got tons of money, engineers, etc… They force any startups to use Yahoo ads or Microsoft ads rather than google adsense. If you don’t use Yahoo or Microsoft Ads they would put innovation bully against you. They would start copy and create similar idea as your startup theme.

    Digg & Facebook dropped Google ads because they fear microsoft was going after them. So uhm…I think all entrepenurers here should be careful corporate bullies. They will crush you and destory your startup company.

    Don’t turn your company like netscape, aol timewarner, enron, etc.

  56. Amit Bhowmik

    I’ve got mixed feedlings on mash. AJAX is definitely a nice touch on the profile pages making it slick to edit. Lack of member search is a big NO NO. See the entire feature list at http://techtrod.wordpress.com/.....ed-review/

  57. Chris

    Get rid of the background customization option. It ruins the site.

  58. JeanGray

    I tried checking the Mash link you provided but I was redirected to a page that said
    “Mash is currently an invitation-only beta service.

    The odds are good that one of your friends is in here already. Hit them up for an invite!”

    None of my friends are members. It just started, they don’t even know of this site existence.
    How on earth then could I tell my friends about it and invite them to join, since I myself am still not a member.
    And dare they say to spread the word around.

  59. reggie

    Looking for an invite please.
    rerun4u4u hotmail com

    thank you!

  60. Sajan John

    I just tried it with great excitement. I am disappointed to know that its nothing but iGoogle and netvibes mixed with myYahoo! . Waste of time for both Yahoo! and users

  61. Chris R.

    There’s no way they’re shutting down 360. It has tens of millions of users. If anything they will just switch the 360 database over to the mash interface.

  62. Style Scoop

    It’s about time Yahoo got more involved in social networking.

  63. Jon

    What is the domain name? Mash.com? If not, I’m not impressed.

  64. mamooshct

    hi. my id name is mamooshct mash is look my id i want invite me

  65. John

    Yahoo! = Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle
    Mash = Miserable Asinine Sloppy Hack ?

  66. Rune W. Ecklon

    I like it a lot better than Facebook. But it does seem to be rather bugg?

  67. Antoine

    You can try Ondza: http://www.ondza.com

    I think it will do better than mash.

    See you,
    Antoine

  68. dolbyzerr

    hmm, very intresting…

    send me invite pleeease…

    dolby0 at gmail dot com

  69. mahmood

    send me invite please.thank you very much

  70. tuvie

    can I have the invitation please …. ?

  71. Belinda

    A true piece of crap, well done Y!, stick to your core product or buy someone who does it better and swallow some pride…we all do

  72. bala

    i have 98 yahoo mash invitation with me - ping me at bala@datagrep.com

  73. AutoBlogging

    Hi,

    Does anybody want invite me please?

  74. ridiculous

    May I also ask for an invitation, if anyone would be willing to semd me. Thanks.

  75. ridiculous

    P.S. My e-mail is: ridiculous@abv.bg

  76. Kmfan

    Cool, I already use Myspace and Facebook all the time. This looks pretty awesome thanks for posting this.

  77. TarGz

    Hi,

    Love to try it, have you some invitations.

    Thanks

  78. SocksAs

    Very impressive. Very sticky.
    Wiki’ing my friends is fun.

    Great groove and tone, sweat UI.
    Some nice Flickr influances.

    Good job. Kinda geeky, But it’s Y!. They’ll get their users to try it.

  79. David Spark

    Wow, another social network for me to get obsessed with for three months and then completely ignore.

  80. puting

    who could give me a invitations? I want to try it. Thank you!
    And my E-mail: iputing@gmail.com.

  81. mamooshct

    hi i want invite mash
    can you help me?
    can you invite me?

  82. Ajith

    Check this search site powered by Yahoo: http://www.goodsearch.com

    This search site donates money to our favourite charities for every search we do through that site.

  83. Glenn

    how can i get invitation?

  84. Live Ghost

    First of all, those who hasn’t tried it PLEASE don’t even write anything. Who in the world writes reviews without using a product?
    @Belinda, John:
    Quick history lesson for you. Facebook wasn’t the first Social network. Your beloved Mark S***erberg stole the whole idea from others. Friendster was the first of its kind. MySpace copied the concept at its expense. Now, facebook is doing the same. Mash is nothing but mashing of all good features available out there. So, give yourself a break. It is cool.
    @Jean-Michel Decombe
    May be you guys should try it first with open mind before commenting about it.
    @Adsense Threat:
    First use it and than you will learn what it is. Adsense/Adword itself were bought up by google. It didn’t design it. So, give yourself a break! AdSense is a piece of crap. Most of the time it serves shady Ads on most websites that lure people into ID theft. No wonder big G makes 40% of its revenue from it. Too bad, Facebook rejected $3 billion from Eric Schmidt. Check out your Orkut that is a joke of a social networks.
    @engtech:
    The concept behind it is to be able to design your own profile. If you can’t design than you can easily “steal” others’ profile style. That is what makes it more fun.
    Well, no offenses intended to anyone. But, use it before commenting.

  85. Json

    I’m just here for the post from fake Mark Zuckerberg…don’t mind me.

  86. George

    Can someone out there send me an invite to MASH…
    georgek372@yahoo.com

  87. Omadsense

    I would like to see it but apparently you need to be invited and I don’t have that many friends….. another kick in the teeth…..

  88. Moses

    Does anyone really need another social network from a big company after Orkut, 360, Flux, Spaces and countless other sites have failed? For a discussion of the reasons why, see my blog.

  89. Andrew Mager

    I love it.

  90. viganunu

    guyz, would you please to invite me into mash? thanks before..

  91. Janov Nguyen

    I was just invited by a friend. I try customizing my profile and it is awesome, can be compared to Facebook.

  92. BinHo

    Plix… invite-me binhoooww@gmail.com

    Thanks for sharing! :)

  93. Diane

    Ugh!! I don’t like the thought that you will be shutting 360 down! It is a great blogging site but you just need to work a few of the kinks out instead of scraping it!
    I already have a MySpace and a Facebook, and I have to say that Facebook kind of stinks - so I am not really interested in Mash if it is going to be the same basically.
    Those of us who use 360 love it because of the blogging forum and the interaction there. Most of us don’t use it for chat purposes or anything of that nature.
    I tolerated Yahoo scraping Yahoo pics, but I have to admit that if they do away with 360 altogether, I think I will be scraping Yahoo. :(

  94. Minh

    Thanks!

  95. amirreza

    i want invite to yahoo.mash
    this is my mail
    a_mey32@yahoo.com

  96. Jessica

    Can someone invite me, pretty please with sugar on top?

    webmaster_at_greenwebdesign_dot_com

  97. xarom

    can you invite me on yahoo mash?

  98. shawn

    So how can i get an invitation

  99. Jason Baker

    Can someone invite me into the MASH jasbak98@yahoo.com? thanks in advance,

  100. Jason Baker

    Could someone invite me in for the MASH? jasbak98@yahoo.com

  101. Orvillain

    Soounds cool… Can someone send me an invite?

    rhounyboy@yahoo.com

  102. Joe

    can someone send me an invite

    mutt3@aol.com

  103. Quang

    Please send me an invite to Y! Mash, quang_ptq@yahoo.com. Thank you