Yahoo 360 to Close in July

Yahoo announced that it would close its blog centric social networking site Yahoo 360 on July 13. The company initially said that it would be closing the site in October 2007 and planned to do so in early 2008. It delayed the plans to the second half of 2008 but because Yahoo Profiles wasn't ready until October, it had to postpone that again.

In an e-mail to Yahoo 360 members, the company said, "We will be officially closing Yahoo 360 on July 13, 2009, to focus our efforts on making your new profile on Yahoo the place where you connect with the people who matter to you most. As a result, you will need to move your 360 information to your new profile before this date. After July 12, 2009, your content on Yahoo 360 will no longer be accessible."

Yahoo 360 was launched in March 2005 in an attempt to compete in the social networking market. Its main focus was blogging but it also had many social networking components. However, it failed to compete with the likes of Facebook or MySpace and also was outpaced by more popular blogging platforms. Yahoo wants 360 users to migrate to its new Yahoo Profiles service that has some basic social networking functions. It has admitted that the new service is somewhat lacking compared with 360, as Mellisa Daniels, Yahoo community manger, wrote in the blog announcement.

"At this time, your new profile does not have all the features and functionality of your 360 profile. However, we are looking at incorporating new ways of expressing yourself through your profile," Daniels revealed. "In regards to uploading multiple photos, your profile on Yahoo allows for only one primary photo for now. This is also something we're looking at improving/expanding based on your feedback."

Yahoo 360 plans to help its users migrate to Yahoo Profiles but also other platforms and is offering tools for them to do so. Yahoo 360 had some degree of success in countries outside the US and is hugely popular in Vietnam. Users in that country will be able to transfer their content to Yahoo 360Plus, which Yahoo has created especially for that market.