Confirmation - 360 to close in early 2008
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HOWEVER !!!
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Update: 20Dec2007
Courtesy of: Brainy Skeeta
On Yahoo!’s Q3 Earnings call today, it was announced that we intend to transition Yahoo! 360 to a more integrated Yahoo! experience in early 2008. I want to provide additional information on this news and assure you that we will minimize any disruption to you and our valued Yahoo! 360 community. I also want to assure you that you can still use all the features of Yahoo! 360 until this transition takes place in early 2008.
We will be sharing specifics of this transition over the next several months, but I can tell you today that Yahoo! 360 will transition to a new universal Yahoo! profile that will be closely tied to other relevant services across Yahoo!, and will include improved blogging capabilities.
With the announcement of this transition, we assure you:
We will preserve your Yahoo! 360 blog content, profile photo, nickname, and friends lists during and after the transition We will provide the right tools to move your blog content; We will give you ample notice before this transition begins in early 2008.
The vibrant community that has flourished on Yahoo! 360 is important to many people, and it is important to Yahoo!. Providing a smooth transition is a top priority for us, and we want to emphasize that we are committed to preserving your blog content and friends lists throughout the transition.
Many of you have asked if Mash, Yahoo!’s experimental profile service, will replace Yahoo! 360. We know this is an important question for many of you, and even more so given this news. We don't have all the answers today, but we are testing solutions, including Mash, in order to provide a more integrated universal Yahoo! profile throughout the Yahoo! network.
We hear your concerns. We are listening to your feedback, and we are committed to providing a more useful, engaging, and valuable service in the future.
Best,
Matt Warburton
Yahoo! Community Manager
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Update: 14 Nov 2007
Since the information had begun trickling down from Matt Warburton, the details have been in flux and is now definitive.
The current word is that Yahoo is providing a new blog engine to replace 360. This is intended to clean up many of the problems 360 developed, add more features, and integrate all of the Yahoo services together.
Assurance has since been given that everone's blog pages and Friends lists will transition into the new Yahoo Blog Engine. No confirmation has been made regarding the transfer of Friends Comments as well.
This is Good News, where before Yahoo was making a statement that 360 was closing, now to find out that "DEFINITELY" Yahoo will be transferring everyones main blog content and Friends lists into the new Yahoo Blog Engine.
Remember when 360 first came out, it was the bomb; exploding onto the blogging scene as being the best thing since free email and Yahoo Messenger. Is the new Yahoo Blog Engine going to be of similar greatness?!
Yahoo stopped supporting 360 several months ago and used the 360 staff for accelerating development of the new Yahoo Blog Engine.
Yahoo has been quiet about the new blog services, the only service with limited support has been MASH. MASH however is NOT a blog engine, it is ONLY a configurable PROFILE page. MASH does NOT have a blog engine associated with it, except www.LIVEJOURNAL.com . Which is a pretty straight forward blog engine. No bells or whistles worth mentioning. However, you can link your MASH page to your LIVEJOURNAL web-log (blog space). I truely doubt that Yahoo would use either of these crude tools as their final product. I think these tools were only created for Yahoo Software Developers to use for research purposes. Allowing them to develop pieces of the final product and play with it in a live forum.
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I may be wrong, but I think
Yahoo has great things for us in the near future.
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This move bolsters my hopes for a much improved Yahoo blog environment. Since the transition is intended to be automatic, we as members simply need to sit back and watch it happen.
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EXCEPT
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You should backup your blog pages and Friends lists to your home computer, or another blog engine. Multiply.com is the most popular blog engine for 360 users to backup their pages and Friends lists. Multiply provides automated tools making the process of backing up your pages and Friends lists simple. But Multiply has its own problems and limitations. Like any Javascript you have on your 360 blog pages won't transfer.
The following links provide instructions in detail:
Backing Up Your Blog Pages to your Home Computer
Backing up your Blog Pages & Friends lists on another Blog Engine
I think if we continue to be active on 360, we won't be too disappointed with the new Yahoo Blog Engine. Time will tell, time is running out; it's almost Thanksgiving, Christmas to follow, and we'll be in Early 2008.
Yahoo might be presenting us with a very happy and blogging resource rich New Year.
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My New Years' Resolution:
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Keep Content Backed-Up and Wait to See
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James
========== The Following was this Original page - last updated 10/21/2007 =========
Preliminary confirmation - 360 to close in early 2008
This is not set in stone. But I would definitely backup your blog information as soon as practical.
One of my Friends, John, had contacted 360 about system problems. 360 apparently confirmed that 360 will close in early 2008.
The following link provides the details:
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/johnofallfaith?p=3751
Included in the link is a supposed site where 360 members can find their 360 Friends who have migrated to other blogs.
I'm hopeful that my present blog will ascend into the next generation of 360; but one should be prepared for the worst.
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========== Message from Yahoo Community Manager ==========
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Yahoo Response (revival of hope):
The Evolution of Yahoo! 360
On Yahoo!’s Q3 Earnings call today, it was announced that we intend to transition Yahoo! 360 to a more integrated Yahoo! experience in early 2008. I want to provide additional information on this news and assure you that we will minimize any disruption to you and our valued Yahoo! 360 community. I also want to assure you that you can still use all the features of Yahoo! 360 until this transition takes place in early 2008.
We will be sharing specifics of this transition over the next several months, but I can tell you today that Yahoo! 360 will transition to a new universal Yahoo! profile that will be closely tied to other relevant services across Yahoo!, and will include improved blogging capabilities.
With the announcement of this transition, we assure you:
We will preserve your Yahoo! 360 blog content, profile photo, nickname, and friends lists during and after the transition We will provide the right tools to move your blog content; We will give you ample notice before this transition begins in early 2008.
The vibrant community that has flourished on Yahoo! 360 is important to many people, and it is important to Yahoo!. Providing a smooth transition is a top priority for us, and we want to emphasize that we are committed to preserving your blog content and friends lists throughout the transition.
Many of you have asked if Mash, Yahoo!’s experimental profile service, will replace Yahoo! 360. We know this is an important question for many of you, and even more so given this news. We don't have all the answers today, but we are testing solutions, including Mash, in order to provide a more integrated universal Yahoo! profile throughout the Yahoo! network.
We hear your concerns. We are listening to your feedback, and we are committed to providing a more useful, engaging, and valuable service in the future.
Best,
Matt Warburton
Yahoo! Community Manager
================ End of Matt's Message ==============
============== Message from Jan regarding Matt ===============
Holly565 AKA JanMD has sent you a message
Sent To: James-Perspectives
AngelooOOoo99 from UK talk to this Matt personally
...there is hope.
I had the opportunity to speak with Matt Warburton on Friday. You should recognize the name...he is the Yahoo! Community Manager who's name is attached to the recent 360 Team blog entry announcing the "transitioning" of 360. My conversation was very similar to to the conversation the Mr. E had with him. I shared with him the same views about lack of communication, unfixed bugs, lack of vision/direction for the Yahoo and particularly 360.
There were a couple of things made clear to me, including that fact that 360 is closing...period...end of story. When I pressed Mr. Warburton for a few more details about this concept of a "new universal Yahoo! profile", he confirmed a few things that we basically already lnew and some things that had I already suspected. Yahoo wants to better intregate its services and this appears to be part of their strategy to accomplish that. In the future, we will not longer have different profiles for every Yahoo product we use.
Our blogs and our list of 360 friends will survive. Whether or not Mash with a blog will be the new profile/social networking system remains to be seen. However, Mr. Warburton was clear that the new system would probably use the same platform as Mash, including the ability to move modules around and customize the information and content.
Mr. Warburton is relatively new to Yahoo, having joined the company a stint with eBay where he ran user outreach programs. I think Yahoo realizes they screwed up on how this has been handled, so now they are reaching out to users to get their feedback and convince us to stay. Mr. Warburton seems to have a customer relations background, which is probably a good thing. Yes, they have asked me and others to help get the word out. No, I do not work for Yahoo and do not own stock in the company
So what does this all mean? It means you should be patient, at least in my never to be humble opinion. Yes, back up your blogs and test other services like Multiply.
============= End of Jan's Message ==============
I've backed up my blog pages at:
Offline IM