The microblogging platform is still in private beta

Sep 2, 2009 09:46 GMT  ·  By

Yahoo has had a spotty history when it comes to the social networking type of services. Let's be honest, it has a very bad history, actually, having closed many of its ventures in the sector, something that continues even today. Still, it's not giving up and it's building up Steam and support for the latest “thing” in the social world, microblogging. Yahoo's love for Twitter is evident and it's about to become a lot more evident now that it has launched an English version of Yahoo Meme, its own flavor of the microblogging platform.

Yahoo Meme was first, quietly, launched earlier this year, but only in Portuguese. The move was somewhat surprising at the time, but many suspected that the service would soon open up to other languages as well. And, indeed, it has, with Yahoo expanding the reach of its microblogging service a couple of weeks ago, but, again, not for the English-speaking users, as some had expected, but for the Spanish ones. Still, the message was clear, Yahoo Meme was going global and now the service has finally gotten an English version.

But the service still isn't open for everyone to sign up and Yahoo is keeping quiet for now. Users wanting to test it can leave their email and they will be notified when they get their account. But, despite Yahoo's unbridled though mostly one-sided love for Twitter, Yahoo Meme isn't exactly a Twitter clone and it certainly isn't a Twitter killer.

The service is basic enough, users share text, videos, music or photos for everyone to see. From then on, it's mostly familiar territory, users can follow others that post interesting content and there is even a ranking of the most popular entries. The users' profiles themselves are rather spartan, in keeping with the microblogging theme, with only an avatar, a 100-character description and, of course, the content itself. It's unclear when the service will be available for a wider audience.