Yahoo! 360 Update: Yahoo’s Miserable Attempt At A Social Network

By Shan Sadiq ● Oct 11, 2006

Remember Yahoo! 360 – Yahoo’s attempt at social networking? I thought I’d catch up on 360 and see what’s been going on with it. So far it looks like bad news.

As if everyone did not already guess, 360 is a failure. To compensate for this failure, Yahoo needs to buy Facebook as soon as possible. If they let Facebook slide, they are in serious trouble. Especially if Google gets to Facebook before them.

Anyways, let’s get back to 360. After doing some deep digging, I was unable to come up with the number of 360 users or information on its growth. My presumption is that growth / user information is not being shared by Yahoo because the social network has no growth and very few users. I even looked through the 186 page Yahoo’s Analyst Day 2006 Report to find information on what Yahoo’s social network plans are in conjunction with 360. The report barely mentioned 360.

In the “Accomplishments” section of the report, Yahoo highlights some of its accomplishments over the last year. Yahoo 360 is nowhere to be seen in this section. They do however mention Yahoo Local & 360 Reviews on page 103 but who the hell cares about 360 Reviews.

So to the best of my knowledge, Yahoo realizes that 360 is a useless piece of junk that needs to be tossed and replaced with something sexy. If they don’t jump on the social acquisition bandwagon fast enough, they will be screwed. If any executive from Yahoo is reading this, BUY FACEBOOK!

Also, I do want to point out that I think Yahoo! is an amazingly innovative company that I respect very much. I just do not agree with some of its decisions in the social sector. Yahoo needs to be seen as a sexy technology company again. Not just a boring media giant. And the only way they will accomplish this is through intelligent acquisitions. Flickr is a good start!