Your social control panel

Posted October 16th, 2008 at 12:00 pm by Jim Stoneham, Yahoo! Communities

 40 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

One of the key dynamics that is re-shaping the Web these days is “social” – social networks, social graph, social bookmarking, social news, social gaming. A rapidly growing segment of Web users is making connections, discovering new things based on feeds, and staying on top of relationships using a variety of social destinations and services.

That’s why we’ve been hard at work integrating a new social foundation into Yahoo!. Today, as part of this, we’re upgrading profiles.yahoo.com with a new universal profile. Available in beta to all of our users around the world, Yahoo! Profiles is a centralized control panel that lets you manage your identity, activities, interests, and connections across Yahoo! — and eventually the entire Web. The new profile is a key element of our Yahoo! Open Strategy, rewiring Yahoo! to make it more open and social.

I want to make it clear that this new profile is not intended to be a new social destination on Yahoo!. Rather, our plan is to integrate “social” as a central dimension into the services you use every day. For example, if you’re on Yahoo! Messenger 9.0, you’re already seeing Yahoo! Buzz, Mybloglog, and Twitter updates as part of your friends’ status messages. Soon you’ll see social capabilities added elsewhere across Yahoo!, beginning with places where you start your day. The new homepage we’re testing will soon have an application that lets you stay up to date with what your friends are doing across the Web. And Yahoo! Mail will be delivering a smarter inbox, displaying emails from your most important connections first.

As you set up your new profile, you’ll see that we’re starting out with the basics. You can enter information about yourself (location, work experience, interests, photo, etc.) and add connections from your Yahoo! Address Book. As we start adding social capabilities to services like the Yahoo! homepage, Mail, and Messenger, your profile information will be used as the trusted source of identity and social preferences. This will be extended across the Web as developers begin using the open APIs we’re offering as part of our Yahoo! Open Strategy, allowing them to build more social experiences based on your preferences. (Note: The updated profile will not immediately be used by Yahoo! 360. More details are explained here.)

Ultimately, our goal is to unify your social experience and connections not only on Yahoo!, but anywhere you travel across the Web. Rolling out the new profile today is a just first step, and I look forward to sharing more details with you in the coming months as we “light up” social experiences at Yahoo!.

Jim Stoneham
Vice President, Communities

Tagged: social, yahoo! open strategy

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40 Comments Add your own

Carl Starrett | October 16th, 2008 at 12:37 pm

I know this product is brand new, but it has the same problem that Mash did…no blog.

GuillaumeB | October 16th, 2008 at 12:55 pm

Great but i’d like to change my nickname for the profile URL by creating another sub-ID attached to my main Yahoo account… where can i go for this now?

Thanks

Will (Astra Navigo from 360) | October 16th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

Folks:

Two words: No blog.

We had pushed, for some time, for a writer’s-friendly replacement to 360 with a social component, which was open and modularized. The profile system is just that — a profile.

You still don’t have a social network; you still don’t have a blog; you still don’t have the means for people to collaborate. You need these things.

I have a hard time believing this is the best you can create in a over a year.

Just please give us a means of transitioning our blogs - because a lot of us have some pretty interesting ones.

(I’ll be over at 360, waiting to turn out the lights).

–Will

hemiguy1977 | October 16th, 2008 at 3:15 pm

Everyone’s profiles are blank! I hope all the old data comes over at some point. Can we have a way to keep the “old” style profiles for those of us who aren’t into all that social-networking junk?

Haleightv | October 16th, 2008 at 4:03 pm

I know this is new and it will be the universal profile for yahoo, but why didn’t you migrate all the existing information including profile picture, personal data including age, links, etc over to the new profile. You had it all at your fingertips.

gaby de wilde | October 16th, 2008 at 4:08 pm

nice, keep up the good work.

:-)

james h | October 16th, 2008 at 5:11 pm

how can i get my pictures and nicknames back on my profiles

Patrick Dang | October 16th, 2008 at 5:34 pm

How to protect my privacy? The privacy setting is so primitive that it is impossible to keep my information away from certain people.
I am very disappointed for what I have seen after having a long time expecting new things from you. I don’t expect a Facebook or mySpace copy, rather I expect that you guys are gonna fix your current problems before you can bring out new stuffs.

(Sigh)

phuongnv | October 16th, 2008 at 6:14 pm

I’ll still use 360 until I can blog on new profile :(

Sunil | October 16th, 2008 at 6:44 pm

I get this message when I go to profiles.yahoo.com. “Your profile was deactivated by an administrator.” How do I fix this?

Shirley Gilpin | October 16th, 2008 at 6:49 pm

No blog area and no backgrounds it looks like..I want pretty background.

Nguyễn | October 16th, 2008 at 6:51 pm

It’s even worse than Mash before (Mash was shut down the last month end), no blog and so much more.

Over 1 year long, I dunno what’ve you keen on for a brand-new product like this one??? :O

I just wonder if some day you will shut down Y!360 like you did with Mash (many of my friends hv the same thoughts), if not, we still love to use the existing one Y! 360 rather than your New Universal Profile…

Pls do not shut down the Y! 360 blog!

Shirley Gilpin | October 16th, 2008 at 6:52 pm

I have two profile accounts on 360. Shirgyblossom and Blossomface. I wanted to use them both.I have email address for each one. Gilpygirl and Shirgy2000.

jeff forbes | October 16th, 2008 at 7:35 pm

Well i’ll keep this to the point.saw your new “profile” system and all i can say is mash/facebook again!!WHY!! All the users of Yahoo want is the restoration of Yahoo 360.What makes it so popular is that it is unique to the other social networks,easy to use and versital.We like that we can personalise or pages,we like the blogs.Connecting with friends is easier than the others.

On behalf of all the users of 360,make it what it once was,stand out,be different,leave the copy-catting to the rest and make Yahoo 360 the number one social networking site it could still be..

Nonameneeded | October 16th, 2008 at 10:09 pm

The new profiles bite! Most of us don’t want your idea of “social networking”. You killed a good feature and replaced it with crap!!

And I shouldn’t have to give you a name and address just to tell you that!

At this rate, yahoo will be out of business in a few months!

sangtan | October 17th, 2008 at 12:43 am

This is a funny story again. While yahoo 360 still have a lot of bugs without fixing, without support, while you still keep silent with my support request, you deliver Profiles without blog.
I do not care how big Yahoo! Open Strategy is, but your mind is not for your user. All we need: a good blog!

Thanks,
sang

cky | October 17th, 2008 at 3:36 am

this is the stupidest move yaho could have made now there is no public profile and i dont want to be on anyones friends list or in there contacts thats why i deny over 300 inivataions a day to be someones friend just like yahoo messenger there is no way to deny and ignore all contact invitations theres no way to view a users profile with out being on there contacts this is the stupidest thing that can be done if i wanted to use my space i would but i dont so i dont want my yahoo to be myspace or to look or act like any other service this is dumb

Dude | October 17th, 2008 at 3:39 am

Yahoo should give the option to users to choose if they want their profile to be displayed publicly in the “new format” or the “old one”.
I personally liked old format.

And what have u done with all the info. which was there in the profile ?? It is totally blank now!!

Posteris | October 17th, 2008 at 3:46 am

Once again YOUR way or the highway…to do this for every profile is a waste of space. Think how many dead links there are out there from all the other forays you had…KISS..it should be a CHOICE…profile or ’social control’ panel.
Oh..and if you do allow your info to be seen you MUST allow 3rd party apps? What is that? Who do you ever ask for info? Most who take the time to write are not the average user. Ever thought of that?

izzy | October 17th, 2008 at 7:16 am

i hate the new profile layout!!!!!!!!! HORRIBLE. BRING BACK THE OLD LAYOUT. this is suppose to protect privacy but to me its more invasive.

niqh | October 19th, 2008 at 4:49 am

Profiles is not just about present social networking and fun, its something more important coz it involves many future products which would depend on how profiles foundations are laid today. Hence Yahoo! has to be responsible.
I know something like profile is complex and yahoo! is huge but something tells me in the open source world y’all are creating w’all will be very dependent on our profiles.
I accessed the profile page but did the go further coz i did not like something about it, sorry.

RS | October 20th, 2008 at 12:13 pm

Well, ya blew it again. Take a quick gander at the 1500 comments on the profiles blog. Almost all negative. Then take a quick look at the Groups blog, almost 200 comments, all negative again. You really hosed the process here.

360 users: they said a while back there were no plans to address any problems there, they gave up on that product a long time ago. This was their fix for all the 360 users problems.

Once again, yahoo has rolled out an incomplete product with no warning to a user base they hoped would take to it, forgetting completely (or perhaps not being aware of) the customer’s preferences. The overwhelming sentiment is “put it back”, will you see or hear this in time?

Oh and buy Rachel and Melissa some cookies. They are getting absolutely blasted over there. You may want to just keep baking because they are funneling users towards the Customer Care department, some ofw hom have never heard of the new product even, according to one user who called up yahoo.

Have fun spinning this one…

RS | October 20th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

OK, one last dig, and then I’m done nattering about a product I don’t use.

“Ultimately, our goal is to unify your social experience and connections not only on Yahoo!, but anywhere you travel across the Web. Rolling out the new profile today is a just first step, and I look forward to sharing more details with you in the coming months as we “light up” social experiences at Yahoo!.”

Jim, where was the user demand for this? Who came to you and said “Jim, we sure wish we could do this with Yahoo”? People don’t use Yahoo for Social Networking, and although some might want to, not all do. Forcing everyone to use it will serve to drive off those that don’t, or so I would think.

It really feels like something done to grab a segment of the market, and not something done because Yahoo users wanted it. The poor rollout process says volumes about whos interests were being served…I don’t see any evidence of user consideration going on. Where was it?

coxy | October 20th, 2008 at 3:09 pm

I like the new layout and everything that’s been done with it so far.

I’d like to see the following services integrated into the Yahoo! Profile pages because these pages are an essential starting point to bring Yahoo! services together and can also be used to promote services to users that might not be aware of what Yahoo! offers:

Flickr, Y! Buzz, Upcoming, FireEagle, delicious, Y! Bookmarks, Answers.

What’s more; it would be awesome if I could import an RSS feed to my blog. Do not turn this into a blogging service - I cannot stress that enough. It needs to be more like Yahoo!’s FriendFeed.

What you should also do is allow me to use my profile URL as an OpenID identifier.

Terra | October 22nd, 2008 at 12:20 am

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Oldyahooprofiles/signatures.html

Yahoo should not be a social network. If we wanted facebook we would ask, if we wanted Myspace we would ask. We do not want these things, we do not need these things.

If you wanted to offer them to us then you should have done so as a separate, new upgrade rather than stripping away our profile information and handing us this clunky, unsafe mess with many key features stripped out. It is not acceptable and we will not stand for it.

Yahoo faces a choice. You can continue down this path and lose a good deal of your customers, including paying SBC Yahoo DSL customers and others who directly pay you for services and even lose users who help bring in ad dollars. Or you can understand your customer base does not want this. The time has come. Swallow your pride and turn back or keep going down the path to bankruptcy. I promise you that none of us want to see Yahoo go down but if the alternative is to have products like the new Profile system forced upon us then I think its best the stockholders lose their money and the designers lose their jobs as punishment for willful ignorance.

donw | October 22nd, 2008 at 12:37 pm

thankss

RS | October 22nd, 2008 at 2:55 pm

They just cut 1500 jobs today. I can only hope the genius behind the profiles rollout was one of them. Everyone else I feel bad for, victims of management mistakes like this one…its not the what (okay, it is kind of–they took away a lot of functionality and privacy), but mostly, its the how.

izzy | October 23rd, 2008 at 11:00 am

Yahoo had a “gem” with the 360 format. Unique, easy to use, fun,and exciting. You were the only game in town with this one folks. Instead of listening to your customers and improving the basic product, you throw it out in favor of yet ANOTHER social networking site such as Facebook and MySpace??? If that is what I wanted, that is where I would be…..I don’t want it and I am not there. I adore 360 and unfortuntely there is nothing else out there like it to go to. What a shame.

floyd | October 23rd, 2008 at 4:24 pm

Sorry to say to the upset users this will be the new Yahoo. The picked the direction because they see dollar signs in the numbers of social networkers. Yahoo will be changing whether we like it or not. Even voting with your feet won’t necessarily change their mind.

Yahoo ain’t what it was, its going this way no matter what. We’ve been done away with. The best we can do is fight for a new feature on some product or another. Don’t count on your ‘No’ meaning anything compared to the metrics though. You will be outvoted by what people actually do. I say vote with your feet, tell a friend, and get a helmet. This is the new Yahoo.

See you on the alternative sites.

find-da-face-in da img | October 24th, 2008 at 7:44 am

interesting comments above

Web 3 Graphics | October 26th, 2008 at 5:48 am

Looking forward to using this. Have had My Yahoo as my homepage for ages. I think its Garfield comics that always did it for me. Also Yahoo has more of a community feel than iGoogle.

Nancy | October 29th, 2008 at 12:35 pm

Still no blog? No wonder your stocks are still spiraling down….

reza | October 31st, 2008 at 1:05 pm

where is member since ?

Wild Woman | November 4th, 2008 at 10:46 pm

Well you opened PROFILE and took away my 360!!!!!

GIVE ME BACK MY 360 PAGE!!!!!!!

Frank Corless | November 22nd, 2008 at 11:52 pm

I’m a big picture person. I watch to see what unveils. I submit sometimes when something seems fitting. I attempt to make it a bit different yet of value. I’m aware there is more going on than all the negative comments of bloggers who want to keep the status quo. Few recognize that no matter how much we try to hang on things will change whether we try or not. What I do think has not been very effective has been selling your vision. Perhaps you’ve lost it and you are trying to adapt from the success of others. Copiers seldom outstrip the visionary. If you have a vision sell the vision. Help others to see the vision. Fail to sell the vision and people will look for one elsewhere. 360 offered a vision in that it allowed the creative people a place of exchange. It gave people isolated from society for a variety of reasons a voice and a way of noticing that they weren’t alone. It brought people together a bit deeper than the superficial that many other sites provided. It is true that many have pushed boundaries and broken rules yet learning is taking place and people are gaining skills to deal with the unsociable who play their control dramas on others. I know as a user of one of the blogs that has been listed as an interesting page I’d have liked more tools to interact more specifically to different types of approaches. Just being able to say a simple thank you in quick comments instead of smile for instance. Or an extra choice of turning down friend requests because your close to your 300 limit so that one doesn’t have to re write with every request or go searching in files in order to re cut and paste it. The real social development is in allowing the little things that build deeper caring not superficial flirting. find ways to give and teach these and you’ve got a real hit.
Frank C

Renee, Hooch and Spinner | December 11th, 2008 at 9:45 pm

GET 360 BACK RIGHT! OR I QUIT YAHOO ON EVERYTHING!

gaby de wilde | December 18th, 2008 at 6:54 am

Guys,

The 360 bugs are burning off all your users?

You need ideas, I’m giving you the answer here, I don’t mean to offend you I just want to see solutions.

I know it sounds ridiculous but lets just sell the 360 blogs to google!

You could make them pay 1$ for it draw up a contract so that you can keep your banner and profile link on the pages. That way you do have the profit but without the problems.

Just sell the problem!

Google will make something new from it. You will have money to do your own hip things. Think how hip it would be! A real hybrid service with both yahoo and google profile links!

But most of all everything would return the way it was.

Then when you have some cash in the drawer…..

Yahoo needs a new edge, say a moderated torrent engine to keep up. Unlike blogs this doesn’t cost any bandwidth or server space.

You can also have Opera software create a Y-linux based Y-webbrowser for you and do so very cheaply.

But just sell the 360 problems!

Perhaps Wordpress wants it or Microsoft but Google could slap it on their server in a few days, it wouldn’t cost any bandwidth and little effort.

One important note:

Do redirect all blog postings to the new location.

For example:

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-ooVnzrU3eqXHKSdB2TQ.j3cMn.tCeQ–?cq=1&p=7455

Should redirect to:

http://blog.360.blogger.com/blog-ooVnzrU3eqXHKSdB2TQ.j3cMn.tCeQ–?cq=1&p=7455

And:

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/factuurexpress?p=7455

Should forward to something like:

http://blog.360.yahoo.blogger.com/factuurexpress?p=7455

I have over 3000 blog postings, those should still be available in the search engines…..

….You don’t have to break the links. You don’t have to fix the bugs, you don’t have to loose the advertisement, you don’t have to loose the profile link and you don’t have to loose the traffic.

Google really doesn’t care much what is on the page, they just want as much web real-estate as they can have. 360 is obviously full of youtube links.

Think! A hybrid service will be good for the stocks.

Feel free to delete this message if you must. But know it was me who months before launch gave you a detailed and accurate description of yahoo answers which today matches answers.yahoo.com down to it’s last detail. I also told you to create a yahoo products section, this was first neglected but later you added it because users flooded the computers and Internet department with questions about yahoo products. I also told you to franchise the answers platform to other companies. This was how you neglected to make money from it. Very sad! I think it’s to late now.

So, the new idea is for you to get rid of the blog and do it the right way, stop torturing your users. Get the redirects to work, write up some profile link/advert contract.

Hybrid technology is the future!

The joined advertisement was much to scary to allow it remember? They have to be more moderate ways to do the same thing. Don’t you think? I know for sure you can pull it of.

Thanks for your time and good luck,

-gaby de wilde

Anne | December 29th, 2008 at 7:59 am

360 was a perfect format for creative bloggers and a social network - if only it worked. I hate MySpace and Facebook - and I think it’s so sad that 360 never was advertised enough - because it is really the best out there….

Damn me if I understand why you had to mess it up…

Lost Soul | January 4th, 2009 at 3:10 am

Silly Yahoo!

paul | January 5th, 2009 at 6:19 pm

R O F L i mean come on yahell !!!!you all inside of yahoo corp know how much we all love 360 !!!! so why bugger it all up ??? i mean on 360 we could all have fun designing our own pages to suit our moods/feelings/thoughts/ETC….
this new thing looks like a brown bag for a bum on the curve with a bottle of maddog..example>>>>>>> bag…ruffle the bag top to expose the bottle top……twist da bottle top….pour said foul contents in
to ur mouth and fake it that you like it and get a cheap buzz till u puke !!!!!!i guess when you in corp office decide to kill 360 then at that moment i will delete my entire account in favor or a site that leaves well enough alone…..i mean come on !! look at how many versions of yim 8 u have !!!! rofl couldnt get it right so u keep bulding on top of the flaws !!!!
we love 360 dont kill it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!