Why did yahoo close down the 360 pages?

[solstar]

That was so stupid. 360 was so much better than the profile page. And on yahoo mail, the "what's new" thing is kinda annoying. It gives too much info on your connections. I wish they would change back to 360. Does anyone know why they changed to a profile page?

[Barkley Hound]

Yahoo is combining all their profile pages and including some of the functionality of 360. It is all to save money and to implement their new contact system.

₪ ɦəlʞɹɐq ₪

[Kee]

Competition, bugs, and centralization were the basis for Yahoo! 360 closing. Yahoo! 360's system would have needed to be more flexible to compete with other social networking services (like Facebook and Myspace - regardless of the target audience). Also, Yahoo! 360 is a beta service so its continued existence was always a shaky proposition as it never moved out of the beta phase. There were a ridiculous amount of glitches with various modules (see http://profiles.yahoo.com/blog/QQCWILCFF...2QToOEoZSg ). Yahoo had a different challenge than other services as it not only did social networking, but it also tried to connect Y!360 with other Yahoo services (like Yahoo! Groups, Flickr, etc.). The connectivity wasn't done well for the most part.

So, Yahoo has developed a "universal profile" for users, making a "social-networking" connection via many of its services (not just focused through one service like with Yahoo! 360). The Yahoo! Profile (http://profiles.yahoo.com ) is a centralized hub, but it is not the "new 360". They aren't trying to make a new and improved 360, meaning a direct replacement for the service was not part of the plan. The Yahoo! Profile is really an upgraded version of the old Yahoo! Members Profile. Some features from Yahoo! 360 won't be included; some may be expanded; and some are totally different.

Product usability, market standing, click-through rates, retention rates, and other aspects are key to keeping an online service viable. Much of how Yahoo earns a profit has been through advertising revenue. They are trying to generate more ad revenue through connections with third-party developers, which is a key aspect of the Yahoo! Profile and other changes. See the links below for more insight into Yahoo's fairly new "Open Strategy" direction and what top Yahoo officials thought about Yahoo! 360. It's pretty obvious that the Yahoo! executives did not think Yahoo! 360 was "successful":
* http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-10041155-80.html
* http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10067445-2.html
* http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives...the_1.html
* http://ycorpblog.com/2008/10/16/your-soc...trol-panel
* http://www.yprofileblog.com/
* http://ashpatel.wordpress.com