MediaVision Blog : Search Engine Marketing

Yahoo is busy testing an experimental social network service called Mash, of which the aim is to make it easier for Yahoo users to interact with friends and family online.

The site, which began an invitation- only preview on Friday, is very similar to Facebook, but with one new “significant” feature - users can edit each other’s profiles, redecorating, changing information, and adding features.

Of course, not all users are enthusiastic about this feature. Would you want to find your profile altered by others in a bad way?
But saying that and taking into account that you’ll only be adding true friends, not people who would blatantly edit your profile it can also be a plus. There are some elements of other users’ profiles that cannot be altered and the extensive privacy controls allow you to set the boundaries that you’re comfortable with.

What’s also cool about Mash is that it encourages you to add friends who are actually friends (or at least people you trust enough not to vandalize your page and not the “add as many friends as possible” trend as on Myspace.

The service is currently based on a user invitation system where existing users create a profile for friends and invite them to take ownership, I have managed to hustle myself an invite and this is a screen shot of what it looks like before you actually add anything. It’s still a bit bare but the potential is there.

Current functions include Guestbook, Blog Module, My Stuff, Flickr RSS feeds, MyMoshLog, Ego Boost, Common Friends, Asteroids, Astrology, PimpMyPet and Hover, with Yahoo! Mash uses a ‘Pulse’ notification system to provide instant updates of a user’s friends’ activities on Mash.

Eric Auchard mentioned in his article about Mash that while Yahoo was early among Internet companies to embrace the trend toward sharing media with friends by purchasing start-ups like photo site Flickr.com, it has struggled to take part in the Web’s biggest new trend: Social networking.

The aim is to follow Facebook’s lead and open module development up to third party creators in the near future.

According to an article on the Reuters website: Eventually, Mash could connect to a variety of existing Yahoo services and mini-applications known as Widgets, acting as a personal profile both on the public Internet or among a private group of friends, depending on individual preference. Yahoo has upward of 500 million monthly users of its various services including a quarter billion Yahoo Mail e-mail users.