Yahoo 360, which was supposed to close early last year, is finally officially shutting its doors on July 13, according to a blog post written on the site today. The social network/blogging service that nobody really used (except in Vietnam) steadily lost its steam, especially in the U.S. According to ComScore, Yahoo 360 had 13.9 million worldwide unique visitors in April. But only 982,000 of those unique visitors were from the U.S. This is down from 1.8 million unique U.S. visitors a year ago (see chart below).
Yahoo 360 was built to create a social network around a blogging platform, and simply couldn’t compete with other social networks like Facebook and MySpace, and other more popular blogging platforms like Wordpress and Movable Type. Similar to the company’s original announcement in 2007, Yahoo is promising to help move blog posts and friends lists over to a more general Yahoo profile. What took it so long to pull the plug? Yahoo says it took almost two years to shut down the service because the company was trying to find “a sustainable and adequate solution” for retaining user’s personal data from the site. The blog post also mentions that they have a solution for users but neglects to mention what exactly that is.
Yahoo also shut down its other venture into social networking, Mash, last summer. Perhaps Yahoo is going to focus its efforts on its Twitter-clone microblogging platform Yahoo Meme, which has been rolling out invites recently but isn’t getting resoundingly positive reviews. Maybe Yahoo should just give up on creating a social network and buy one instead (Twitter!). Or maybe it should just make a deal with Microsoft for boatloads of money.
UPDATE: Yahoo responded to us via Twitter (!) with this: “the solution we have for users is a new blogging tool, found in user’s profiles.”
(Photo credit: Flickr/Mark Lobo).
Yahoo is like a hooker.
It blows and leaves you feeling dirty every time you visit it.
o how it dissappoints me so…
o how they dissappoint me…
Yahoo should just keep it open where its successful and where its not get rid of it and that goes for all properties of yahoo.
On some of yahoo’s international properties all you see is a yahoo logo a search box and links to yahoo news and mail if thats what is successful there than go for it if somethings are successful in some places but not others give it to the team of the countries where it is and axe it from all other places
Bartz is cleaning house! Can’t wait to see where Yahoo is 24 mo from now.
Hmmm, the irony of the timing possibly portends the same fate of Google’s Wave? Every web product launch always holds the promise in the immediate of huge success, and especially when a major web brand is behind it, it looks like a no brainer. Unfortunately, this is rarely true.
Facebook in 5 years.
MySpace in 3 years.
Twitter in 1 year.
>)
They will never profit? Joke is that they are racing towards profits, but since the World ends in 2012 they won’t make it >)
Facebook in 5 years.
MySpace in 3 years.
Twitter in 1 year.
>)
They will never profit? Joke is that they are racing towards profits, but since the World ends in 2012 they won’t make it >)
Geocities, Mash, 360…mybloglog, flickr, Yahoo profiles, Answers, Groups…how fragmented do people *want* their social experience?
Apparently, Yahoo thinks that fragmented = good, just not *too* fragmented…this ain’t right.
People want an integrated experience (see facebook’s massive growth). Fragmentation of experience = useless, frustrating and not likely to drive any kind of serious engagement.
I’ll be interested to see what Yahoo does given the recent statement where they said they were interested in buying something social.
Please don’t talk of what users want. Remember American Car makers who relied on what users wanted such as BIGGER CARS…..Well look what it got them.
The truth is you can’t be the master of everything. And thats why yahoo got into this mess in the first place. We will see how well google will do.
Without speaking for “all users”, there are three things I want from a blogging platform:
1) It does not go away, change your URL, or loose your data
2) It helps you promote your blog (e.g. social networking features)
3) It keeps the features updated (plug-ins, embeds, formatting, and whatever comes up next).
So…. that’s why I am using livejournal.com, and so far pretty happy with it, although the fact that it is owned by Russians now does make me nervous. I wish Yahoo was the one who bought LJ, not the Russian SUP.
yesss it will be very interesting. the social site will have to have a great domain name first and foremost. a name that will be the pillar of all yahoo search and social interaction. a name that needs no explaination and has the capacity to become the new social search digital media standard.
it must be:
-personalized
-keyphrase
-natural language
-location based
-universal
-dot com
-start with “my”
-a name users will forever call home for mobile and internet social media applications
MyLocator .com – bing-o
Facebook will go the way of Yahoo unless they figure out that even with 200M+ users they are not reaching most of the world – which is why Facebookesque SM sites are opening in other countries. Facebook missed the opportunity to be truly global and have perhaps 1Billion+ users.
Unlike FB or twitter, Yahoo actually has good ad platforms for display ads, contextual ads, search ads, and whatever else ads. So, they could probably monetize an extra 14 mil uniques unlike FB. I guess, there is someone who knows better there in Y!
Though I agree with you regarding international markets. I don’t agree with you that it would have been a play for them.
1 Billion users and the margins they are getting on 200 Million users just multiply’s that lose by at least 5, if not a lot more give you can’t make a dime off international users.
Yes everyone in the US ignores international markets, and a site with 18M users who happen to be international is considered a failure and shutdown.
I don’t call me crazy but the whole social networking “thing” has yet to prove that it can make a profit. If they could then those 18M users would be kept.
Still it’s nutz to toss away more people than watch most TV shows because they aren’t in the US. Use your brains and figure a way to make money off of those users. IF Bartz was intelligent, Yahoo would figure that out.
Facebook has spoiled everyone in the numbers game. If you don’t have 3 digit millions then you are considered a failure. If you have most of your users internationally you are considered a failure, and you shutdown.
Seems like giving up. You can give up on a lot of things, that easy. Building something with double digit millions isn’t easy, and yet it is easy to give up on it and “move on”. All in the name of cleaning house. True talent would have figured out how to make a profit and then told investors that they had a success.
Bah. Idiots all.
Wake up and Smell the Coffee…
Move them all over to Multiply. The greatest social media sharing site there is. They’ll never want to leave.
Just out of curiosity, how did you come up with this headline? Do you guys always rub it in when a project or company fails? What a good display of class. Sure, you guys can say whatever you want, its your website. But it’s really tiring to see these “you suck” headlines.
OFF topic, FRIDAY may 29Th, 2009. I’m looking for a business partner.
I know it’s not really related, but the commenting system on that vietnam site let you not only attach FILES to comments, but 3 of them at the same time!
Yahoo is desperate, and its trying anything it can to stay on the game. But they are loosing sight of the most important thing. Their users!
Seriously you gotta go to google to find something in the Yahoo portal page!
Their systems cripple you, they are difficult to use!
Woops, sorry! may be I turned a bit negative on the Yahoo! side.
Am actually surprised about what I just wrote, I guess I kinda thought of it subconsciously!
“To err is Yahoo-ian.” (Diane Normandin)
Zombie Applications … how to beat the banks
Yahoo is slowly going the way of AOL.
Its only YahooMail and Flickr that stop the site from going into complete meltdown.
For those who have a Yahoo 360 blog, you can move it to My Opera Community by using their import-tool: http://my.opera...ommunity/import.
And My Opera Community is run by Opera Software, which will be areound for a long, long time
I’ve been a Yahoo! 360 user since July 2005. I know I was overly optimistic in my hope that Yahoo would wow us with a great replacement product for 360. Instead, all they gave us was a minor tuneup to our Yahoo profiles. As for their new blogging service on the profile, here are my initial comments:
1. No spell check options
2. No RSS fees
3. No blogroll
4. No tag cloud
5. No index
6. Random characters that can’t be deleted
7. Editing a blog post causes all of the text to disappear
8. No abillity to center images, justify text or embed music players.
It took them 8 months to provide this kindergarten level blog service…that was already available on Yahoo! Shine. What took so long? That’s a good question, but watching Yahoo allow 360 to wither away was pretty sad.
first geocities and now this o yahoo how u dissappoint me so….
o yahoo how you dissappoint me so…
I’ve read the comments and I must agree with most of the things said about Yahoo, however, concerning the drop in user activity, it was their own fault. We faithful bloggers were told nearly 2 years ago that the site was being taken away for bigger and better things. Many users packed up and left at that point…some jumped ship to places like Facebook, MySpace, and Multiply. Problem was…it just didn’t have the community that had been built on 360. And honestly, for people like me, they liked the ability use the service without being a true tech wiz. If I wanted to change my background…I could do it without knowing how to use a CSS code thingy and it wasn’t designed by someone else…it was based on what I was feeling, and the theme I wanted for my page, or whatever I pulled out of my creative senses. Back in 2006 and 2007, I could post a blog entry and not fear that it would just disappear. My page morphed into a porch setting, where visitors would read my stuff, listen to a little music on the player, comment as if in a party setting with ease. I loved the parties we had. The other sites just don’t facilitate that sort of interaction. Some users had the slickest page looks and there was room to display creativity that many didn’t know we had in reaching large audiences. The 360 community was not perfect…lacked many of the newer applications that some demand…but it was truly a community. Each page being like the home of a good friend that you could stop by comment, share a coffee with and move on to the next residence.
And then Yahoo did the unthinkable…told us that they would give us something new. So, even though many threw up their hands and left…many stayed on. We waited, and waited…during that time, 360 became harder to use. It was like they had decided to just let the place rot down. The things we used to be able to do acquired more and more bugs…whatever we complained about went unheard. The site blog was never updated. I believe we went almost 8 months knowing nothing…and people left. Then the word came that the joy of blogging would return as we would be moving to the promised land of the new Yahoo brainchild…January, 2008. It came and went…and those that were waiting to see…although we’d opened other pages elsewhere….always stopped in just in case they weren’t lying. Fools that we were…accepted the circumstance of unrequited love. Crap!!! So since that time, with no more updates…we played around with the site maintaining contacts since early 2008…and all of a sudden we noticed that apps were being repaired, users that had given up were returning…what jerks we are. We didn’t know when it would all just blank out, but we had fun while it lasted. I mean, why would they open 360 Vietnam while shutting us down…with company changes…had they come to there senses? Would everyone come back? Maybe…
Now we’ve been given a date…finally. Our eviction is final on July 13th. The new platform stinks on Profiles. It just a mental institution white page, no blog comment notifications, no music player, and that creepy “Twitter,MySpace,Facebook” feel that we avoided “Mashed” up into one horrible joke of a solution. Just look around at the other sites…there are groups named 360 Refugees, Evicted by Yahoo360, 360 Anonymous, the 360 Gang. It’s really pathetic although I’m a member of one of those…okay, maybe two.
Anyway…I just wanted to say…there were tons of users who would have never left had Yahoo committed to the site and made it better…heck, just made it work again. They don’t value their users in the least bit. A year to develop a file 13 for our content. It wasn’t all the other sites…that’s why we chose 360 in the first place. And from the length of this comment..you can see this user is really in need of a new place to vent. lol (sorry about this)
And they are STILL promising a “solution”. They just want to dump us all.