Yahoo! seems to’ve given up totally on social networking as a viable business. They’d already been ignoring Yahoo! 360 for a while. Then they launched Yahoo! Mash, their beta attempt at a social network. Doesn’t seem to have worked either (obviously, because I’m only one in my circle I know who’s on Mash, apart from Lord Vader that is), because I got an email from them today:

Dear Yahoo! Mash member,

Thank you for trying out our Mash Beta service. We hope you had fun with it.

Please note that we will shut down Mash on September 29, 2008. As a result, your current profile on Mash will no longer be available. We strongly recommend that you return to http://mash.yahoo.com and copy the content that you wish to save onto a separate document.

For a list of FAQs, please refer to the Mash Help Page.

Thanks for trying out Mash!

Matt Warburton
Yahoo! Community Manager

In a way, it does make sense. Yahoo! is concetrating more on developing platforms than services itself. It’s a member of the OpenSocial Foundation, and since it’s anyway too late for the Yahoo! - or even Google - to enter the social networking game they find it easier to create platforms which everybody else uses, like OpenSocial.