Sunnyvale, California — After almost two years without rendering any support, Yahoo 360 Degrees, once the company’s best arsenal to compete in the social-networking market, has finally decided to shut down on July 13, something it originally planned for early 2008 and later delayed to last year’s second half, during which time its users should have migrated over to the new Yahoo Profiles service, the company said Friday.
During its more than four years of existence, the site has never actually been out of the beta stage.
Yahoo has been easing the shift for users to switch to their “new profiles,” and is now requesting users move into their new profile by no later than July 12. In an e-mail to its members, Yahoo Community Manager Melissa Daniels at the 360 Blog writes:
While we know that many of you have dependably enjoyed this service over the past few years, although our goal has been to find a way to unify your social experience and connections across all of Yahoo! and anywhere you travel across the Web.
So, while we are sad to say that we will be officially shutting down Yahoo 360 on July 13, 2009, to focus our efforts on making your new profile on Yahoo the place where you connect with the people who matter to you most. As a result, you will need to move your 360 information to your new profile before this date. After July 12, 2009, your content on Yahoo 360 will no longer be accessible.
“At this time, your new profile does not have all the features and functionality of your 360 profile. However, we are looking at incorporating new ways of expressing yourself through your profile,” Daniels wrote. “In regards to uploading multiple photos, your profile on Yahoo allows for only one primary photo for now. This is also something we are looking at improving/expanding based on your feedback.”
Yahoo 360 launched in March 2005 but never attained the popularity the company expected compared to competitors like Facebook and MySpace. Yahoo 360’s failure stands as an example of one of many red-hot Internet opportunities that Yahoo was unable to capitalize on in recent years, as it lost its technology edge and its finances foundered.
However, in other countries, especially Vietnam, the site has been the most popular blogging portal. For this reason, Vietnamese users can migrate their Yahoo 360 content to Yahoo 360Plus, a product specifically made for the Vietnamese market that the company announced a year ago.
Last August, Yahoo also shut down Mash, which was another failed attempt into social Web sites.
Yahoo 360 does give its users the capability to download their content and export it to other popular blog-publishing services like WordPress and Google’s Blogger. They can also migrate their content to Yahoo Profiles’ blog feature.
You can find out more information on how to do that here.