What better way to close the week than with the destruction of a rival's business? Yahoo seems to think this is the way to go about things, as it bought BlueLithium, an ad network and forced it to pull the plug on its social network, MingleNow. We know this because the blog that announced the closing down directs the network's users to Yahoo owned sites:

"Feel free to take your photos and friends with you to other communities such as Flickr, post your events on Upcoming or find your favorite bars and clubs on 123out.com" The first two are properties of the Sunnyvale based company while the latter is currently redirecting traffic to MingleNow. A user going by the online name of "MoiLouNoi" that seemed to be a part of the social network commented on TechCrunch.com that "the new, re-vamped 123out.com will be launching soon and it will be just as good and even better."

The one thing that MingleNow had above the competition was that it offered "personalized relevant content in the form of professional photographs taken at nigthclub events. Many users who went out regularly were able to have photos of themselves from multiple events and meet others who were at the same party." It's a niche that they well found and dwelled on, but now it looks like it's all fading away into the distance.

The date of the closing is the 7thof January and by then the users should better move out or else they'll risk losing everything. It's interesting how this comes to be, as Yahoo! 360 is also due to be closing by that time, so what social network will the second biggest search engine in the world have? Mash hasn't been heard of for about three weeks and Kickstart has a completely different approach to the concept.