Search Engine Journal

Yahoo 360 Invitations and Beta Testing

Today I was invited to join the beta testing of Yahoo 360, Yahoo’s new blogging, photosharing, and social networking answer to Orkut, Friendster, LiveJournal and MySpace. Barry Schwartz over at SERoundtable was giving them out and I’ve already distributed about 15 invitations today - with 85 left for free distribtuion. If you’d like to beta test Yahoo 360 before it is released to the public, email Search Engine Journal and I’ll invite you.

So far, Yahoo 360 is quite nice. It seems to be the missing link connecting Yahoo Groups, photos, and centering them around blogging. One aspect of Yahoo 360 which makes it more of a realistic venture in my opinion than Orkut is that people use Yahoo features which require one uniform Yahoo login. If you belong to a Yahoo Group, use Yahoo Mail, chat on Yahoo Messenger - Yahoo 360 is easilly integrated.

Yahoo has also used 360 to showcase Yahoo Local User Reviews. If you’re checking out your friends’ profiles or maybe looking for some people with similar interest in your town, if they’ve commented on local businesses such as bars or restaurants it is shown in their 360 account (as default but this option can be opted out). Those 360 users who listen to tunes on Yahoo Music can also share their favorites with Yahoo 360 members. Add other shareable information like favorite sports teams from Yahoo Sports, RSS feed subscriptions from My Yahoo and listings from Yahoo Pets community and you have various ways to find people who share your same interests out there in the Yahoo universe. More to come.