Yahoo! Mash Beta – New social networking site

Posted on September 17, 2007 at 8:45 pm

Yahoo is on the verge of releasing it’s new re-vamped social networking web site called Yahoo! Mash. After the failure of Yahoo 360, rumors started that Yahoo would be coming out with a new site that would go against the powerhouse social networking sites like MySpace, FaceBook, and Orkut. However, it’s now official and current in private beta testing. You can get invited to use the new service by going to InviteShare, sign up and then request an invite for Yahoo Mash.

Yahoo Mash – A unique social networking site

I just received my invite from InviteShare and thought I would give everyone a quick roundup of the features, what makes it different than the other sites, and whether or not it’s worth switching over to!

Yahoo Mash has the same single user profile concept like all of the other social networking sites (each person has their own profile). The interface is much cleaner than MySpace by far and on par with FaceBook and Orkut. As of now, there are not ads all over the place blocking your view of the main content of the page. Also, the interface is 100% AJAX, which means it’s very fast and responsive and you can type notes or add items on the page without having to refresh the page or leave the current page.

Yahoo Mash Wiki Profile Feature

Well one thing that is completely different about Yahoo Mash is the concept of a Wiki Profile, which gives your friends the ability to edit your profile by adding text and other items. Of course, this could be taken either as very "fun" and "interactive" or simply annoying as hell! Wouldn’t it be great to wake up one morning and see that your profile picture has been changed to the closest animal that resembles your face! If so, it can easily be changed in the Settings to disabled.

Modules & Widgets

Just like FaceBook, Yahoo Mash allows you to modify and personalize your profile by adding in lots of custom written modules and widgets. There is a gallery of modules that include things like Flickr RSS, Astrology, PimpMyPet, and lots more. By default, there is a module called Blurt, which lets your add news items or announcements to your profile page. This is kind of like the "What I am doing right now" feature of FaceBook.

Also by default, is the My Stuff module, which lets you type in any HTML or text that you want everyone to see on your profile page. You can use this to paste in code for YouTube videos, Flash content, or other fun stuff. There is also the tags module, which lets you add custom tags to your profile page. When you click on the tag, it’ll bring up a list of other people who typed in that same tag.

Finally there is a funny module called The Mash Pet, which is a simple way to express your current mood to anyone visiting your profile. You can easily rearrange any of the modules by dragging and dropping them into the new location. You can check out all of the different modules at the online gallery.

Yahoo Mash Guestbook

Of course coming out with your own social networking site without "The Wall" or "The Scrapbook" would be asking for trouble! It’s exactly the same thing as in FaceBook and Orkut, but it’s called the Guestbook in Yahoo Mash.

Yahoo Mash Custom CSS Styling

Out of all the features, the one thing I like the best is the ability to use CSS to custom style your profile. This is what MySpace has, but FaceBook does not. So it really looks like these guys made sure they grabbed the best features of both sites before releasing their own. You can use it in basic or advanced mode, so if you simply want to upload a background and change the font color, you don’t have to know any technical stuff!

How to get a free Yahoo Mash beta Invitation

If you want to try it out for yourself and see if you like it, you can get a free invitation to to Yahoo Mash by going to InviteShare. I signed up and got myself in the queue and the next day I had my invitation! It’s really a cool site to check out the latest beta Web 2.0 sites on the Net.