Yahoo! 360° – A New Model for Online Sharing
In the “About Me” part of my Yahoo! 360° page I describe myself as
“a husband, a father, game player, and a pioneer of virtual worlds. For
more than 30 years, I’ve been connecting people with each other using
computers as the mediating technology…” Along the way, I’ve been
family, friends, and colleagues. Now, I get to tell you about
Yahoo! 360° — a new model for online sharing that’s easy and convenient for everybody.
During my years of online community building, I’ve seen many types of
social software emerge: email, chat, instant messaging, forums, groups,
multiplayer games, blogs, and twikis (to name a few).
Until now, most social software worked on a shared view, what
I’d call a we-centric model, where every participant sees the
same information as all the other participants. We all see the same posts
on a message board, the same conversation in a chat room. In effect,
communications are either public or private.
These days, as we publicly post more of our opinions, photos, and sensitive
information on the net, there’s growing concern about spam and other threats
to our privacy. And there’s a need for tools to help us manage real-world relationships that are becoming more and more digital. The time is right for me-centric community – a way
for you to get the information and connections you want, without giving
up control of your information. Yahoo! 360° lets you control not just
what you see but what others can see about you.
For example, I have different types of relationships — friends, family, coworkers, IM buddies, mailing-list co-members, blog subscribers, etc. I want to share some of my info with some of these people, and some of it with others. Some stuff may not be appropriate or of interest to everybody.
On Yahoo! 360′, you can keep it simple and use the same settings for all your contacts, or you can decide how others experience you by grouping the people you know into me-centric communities (called categories). You set how different groups of people can contact you (via IM, email, blog comment, etc.), and you decide who can see your reviews, photos, and other personal stuff.
I’ve created categories for work (360° Team, Management) and personal
use (Family, Gamers, Alumni) — it’s easy for me to move people around,
or add them to multiple categories. The categories are invisible to
everyone but me. For example, my family can see my personal contact
info and photos, and my manager can check in and comment on my blog. :-)
We’re extending the me-centric approach by integrating
your Yahoo! 360° identity controls with other Yahoo! services. For
example, you can choose to display your Yahoo! 360° nickname and
photo in your Groups. When you search on Yahoo! Local, the businesses with reviews written by your friends show up prominently.
The Yahoo! 360′ team is excited about the official invitation-only beta starting today. Please sign up to be on our beta waiting list. We’ll let you know when we open the beta to a larger audience.
Randy Farmer
Yahoo! Community Products Team
Congrats for your one-point Social Software integration.
this looks pretty different and feature packed….
waiting for my invitation….
Deep
You must add a “trust metric” to this. Thats one thing thats missing from big networks.
Y! 360 is the kind of stuff I’ve been searching for sometime now ‘cos the privacy issues you mentioned are starting to affect me. Thx Yahoo!
(Now if I could only get an invite ;-) )
damn! and if only I could as well, they just updated the homepage with the sign in field but n my password doesnt work argggg hhh desperatly waiting for an invite over here !!
I can’t wait to test Yahoo 360. Anybody want to give me an invite?
I could use an invite…
Hi, Randy.
Yahoo 360 sounds intruiging. I’d like to try it. However, I’m confused. Why does that service’s home page (360.yahoo.com) currently yield a “page not found” error?
Normally I would assume it’s some kind of minor temporary web glitch. However, reading around the blogosphere it seems people have been experiencing that problem for at least a little while now. Seems very odd from such a major online company like Yahoo, especially during the initial public buzz about the service.
What’s up with that?
Thanks,
- Amy Gahran
Editor, CONTENTIOUS
Could someone send me an invitation? Can’t wait to try it out!
‘Why does that service’s home page (360.yahoo.com) currently yield a “page not found” error?’
We’ve been able to isolate this intermittent bug and are working on a fix right now. I’ll follow up here when it is fixed.
Until then, some folks are reporting success if they log out of Yahoo! before attempting to access the page.
We’re sorry for any inconvenience.
Surely, you would send an invite to someone who religiously uses Yahoo’s Address Guard feature (probably the best service in e-mail history).
jpcooper76-ysearchblog at yahoo com
Thanks,
JC
is per blog post permissions on the horizon?
That’s cute, I can now log in to 360 via your profile, (which has a dumb URL) but any 360 functionality, including http://360.yahoo.com/ throws the 404 error.
You guys should make sure non-stupid URLs work, so people can link in and promote your 360. A la:
http://360.yahoo.com/profile-dannyman
Good luck, Yahoo!
I love Yahoo! and can’t wait to get an invite to 360. *begs*
This looks like a fantastic service! Most of my friends are currently using xanga, which we’re not really happy with. The privacy issue has come up MANY times. The looks aren’t so hot either.
I would definitely switch over to 360 and I’d love to try to pull them over too.
yahoo id: rgmyung
Hi there,
I don’t seem to see yet privacy controls over blogging. I mean anyone can read any post and that i would like to be restricted, exactly like photos sharing (which is great implemented btw).
I hope this is just because of the beta :)
Razvan
‘Why does that service’s home page (360.yahoo.com) currently yield a “page not found” error?’
This problem is now fixed.
Randy
Wow.This is great.Now if only I could get 1 invite from somewhere.
Congrats to the team! A bumpy start, but it’s really looking solid. And I love your given name.
I love it, got invited yesterday cool!
If some of you are interested drop me a line at the email link below my name
Enjoy, it’s pretty sweet ;)
360eeeeeeee Yahoo!!!!!
Been reading much about it since yesterday besides ajax of course. Cant wait to get my hands at it.
Desperatly waiting for an invitation!!!!
Hey Yahoo!, invite me too!
paulgeous
when will i get an invitation???????
How a cut-n-paste can ruin your day: A clarification and a fix for Yahoo! 360
The volume of response to the Yahoo! 360 beta has been unprecedented and we are excited to see so many people sending their feedback in the first days of our maiden voyage. Along the way folks have made lots of great suggestions, praised and panned the features, and found some problems in the beta a small number of those have been urgent and we are acting on them immediately. An example is the accidental inclusion of a copyright notice in RSS Feeds.
The Yahoo 360 terms of service (TOS) read, in part:
8. CONTENT SUBMITTED OR MADE AVAILABLE FOR INCLUSION ON THE SERVICE
Yahoo! does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service.
But, the XML output from the 360 blog RSS feeds includes:
“Copyright 2005, Yahoo!”
The TOS is correct.
The copyright notice is, and always was, a bug.
Most likely it was included as the result of cut-n-paste from code we use elsewhere and imperfect testing.
The copyright notice bug will be fixed today and will no longer appear on Yahoo! 360 RSS feeds.
We are sorry for any confusion this caused.
Please continue to send us your thoughts on the beta.
http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/360/cgi_feedback
Thanks,
Mike La Rotonda
Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! 360
Hi.I was wondering if you could please send me an invite.Thanks
I’m interested in testing it out. Are you sending invites readers of this blog?
i love 360 but where is the beef – that is flickr tools and services into 360 so u can share ur photos from Yahoo photos or flickr account. 360 looks great please send me invite but or o course i already signed up for the invation still waiting hehe. great blog by the way .
Now Open! A Yahoo! group to exchange invites and to provide user group resources for Yahoo! 360 users.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Y-360/
Looks interesting. Could use an invite if any are floating around.
Let me also cast a vote for per post privacy settings in the blog service.
Also, I read in The Unofficial Yahoo Weblog that there is a way to restrict access of some of your friends to other friends. IE, your girlfriend doesn’t have access to your other girlfriend. Anyone figured that out?
want invitation?email to:emilyang@xilu.com
It is all for free~~!I Will not sell my invitation online!
I think it,s wonderful
can I get an invite to Yahoo 360 :D <3 I’ll give ya 1000 kisses .. woo! :P
If anyone has a spare invite, it would be greatly appreciated. Please sent to – poolplayer69 “at” gmail.com
Thanks in advance,
- ds -
I can give away invites to the first 10 people who contact me here http://www.national-real-estate-directory.com/real-estate-forum/
check out this blog, I gave the guy and invite and just love his artwork: http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-_h25kw41f6NhaW5Hzj5J_zmx1A–
I don’t understand why 360 hasn’t gotten more exposure in the technology press. Y! often does great things (cutting edge) that seem to go unoticed by the mainstream.
please send me yahoo 360 invite
I am waiting for an invite from u az my first friend in yahoo360…….
tnx