Did Yahoo do away with your own personal blog?

[D]

I remember some time ago that Yahoo sent email announcements saying that they were going to be doing away with the Yahoo blogs. I cannot find were all my blogs went to, you know the page were you customized it and showed your avatar, your friends, your interests, your feeds. What happened to all that? And how do we get that back? or do we? why did they remove it?

[Kee]

The service was called Yahoo! 360 beta and it was shutdown around July 13, 2009.

Your blogs were only moved to the Yahoo! Profiles service, if you initiated that transfer and if they were non-mature content designated blogs. If you didn't take the steps outlined in those e-mail announcements, your blogs are likely permanently gone.

If you did follow the instructions, then you should be able to go to your Yahoo! Profile (http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/profiles/ for instructions on how to set up your Yahoo! Profile. The Yahoo! Profiles service has been upgraded to include some social-networking features, but it is not the same service as Yahoo! 360.

As for the reasons behind closing Y!360, it came down to competition, bugs, and centralization. In a summary, the service was not competitive enough and the system behind it was not flexible enough to be progressive. There were a ridiculous amount of bugs (see http://profiles.yahoo.com/blog/QQCWILCFF...2QToOEoZSg ) and the service never got out of the "beta" phase. Lastly, Yahoo! made a decision to centralize services and generate more ad revenue through relationships with third-party developers. Hence, the launch of their "Open Strategy". You can read more about the strategy and what executives thought of Y!360 (i.e. basically as unsuccessful), in the source links of my answer.

Another Yahoo! service that can be used to create a free personal blog is Yahoo! Shine (http://shine.yahoo.com/page/about/ for details. See the right side of the main Yahoo! Shine page and click on the "My Blog" link under your personalized area. There are "Manage My Blog" and "Write New Post" links at the top left of that page.


Otherwise, the options to download and save all your 360 content to your computer OR move your content to the Yahoo! Profile (http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/profiles/general.html for the Yahoo! Profile Help Form. Lastly, you can try to do advanced searches on various search engines to see if a cached version of your Yahoo! 360 blog is still visible. However, it's likely the opportunity to view those cached pages has passed as well. In essence, you have a VERY SLIM chance of getting your content now.