After all the discussions around the closure of Yahoo 360 from past two years, the decision has finally been taken to shut down Yahoo 360 on July 13, 2009. This means that the users will be asked to move into their new profiles on Yahoo by July 12, 2009, where Yahoo will no longer be supporting the service.
According to the announcement made, the new profile on Yahoo will allow users to connect with other people on Yahoo, and share updates and activities with the people they meet on the Web.
Melissa Daniels, Yahoo Community Manager says:
“While we know that many of you have faithfully used this service over the past few years, our goal has been to find a way to unify your social experience and connections across all of Yahoo! and anywhere you travel across the Web. So, while we’re sad to say that we will no longer be supporting Yahoo! 360°, we’re excited about this larger plan and hope you’ll transition over and be a part of it, to.”
For those worried about their blogs on 360, Yahoo is providing two options to go with.
- The users can start blogging on their profile on Yahoo using the new blogging tools. These tools will allow posting of content and integration of photos from Flickr.
OR,
- Yahoo is providing the option to export blogs and content to any of the supported blogging systems like WordPress, Blogger, and MoveableType, etc. They plan to generate an archive with all of user entries and photos and will send the users a link to download the archive.
Melissa Daniels adds:
“We also want to reiterate our commitment to preserving your blog content. We have been working to make sure we put the right mechanisms in place so that you can move your content and minimize disruption. It is with this thought in mind that we’re happy to introduce a new blogging feature that has already been integrated into your profile. You can find more information on this below, or try it out by visiting your new profile at http://profiles.yahoo.com.”
Yahoo announced that the decision to close Yahoo 360 and transition users to profiles is part of their larger strategy and they were waiting until they had an alternative solution. Now that they do have the alternate solution to offer to the community of Yahoo 360 users, they are ready to officially shut down 360.
Yahoo 360 was launched on March 29, 2005 as a social networking, blogging, and photo sharing service, where users could create their personal websites, share photos from Yahoo Photos, maintain blogs, lists of local reviews, supply profile information, and see which friends are currently online. However, this service could never really gain the popularity it could have. In September 2008, Yahoo had also shut its other social networking site Yahoo Mash.
Link: Yahoo!360