Yahoo! 360° Review
Thanks goes to Blogcetera for inviting me to give Yahoo! 360° a test drive. Hers is 2 Tails. Mine … the usual “Lewis Moten’s Blog“. Creative aren’t I?
Well, I started making blog entries and found that it was much like MSN Spaces. It was nice that I could actually edit the HTML source code if I chose, but a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor was selected by default. I tried adding some javascript, but it removed the script tags. I didn’t see anything in the way of templates, or even for changing colors of templates. Everything had that Yahoo! feel to it.
I started venturing around and found something called LAUNCHcast radio. I started using it and found that it is similar to Last.FM. You listen to a song. You rate the song, artist and album. As you listen and rate more songs, your customized station gets smarter and plays more music to your taste. Apparently, you can share your station through your Yahoo! 360 blog with others so that they can listen to what you like to hear.
Another thing that I discovered was Yahoo! Local. I started looking up some businesses in my area and wrote some reviews on them. Sooner or later, they should start appearing in my Yahoo! 360° profile as well.
I was also able to share the Yahoo! groups that I was currently subscribed to. Being that I didn’t pay much attention to the groups that I was subscribed to anymore, I just removed myself from them.
I checked out the picture album and registered my cell phone to be able to upload pictures to it.
It’s nice to see all of this done for me, but I think that I still prefer blogger.com over Yahoo! 360°. Yahoo! 360° is definately better then MSN Spaces though. There are many features that I just haven’t mentioned here.
April 5th, 2005 at 5:54 am
Yep. My thoughts exactly. I am using Serendipity but am not 100% satisfied. I have my other blog on WP and sort of wish that blogcetra was there as well. I did do a mini makeover today that managed to pacify me a bit though. As far as Yahoo! 360 goes? I may post something along just to have it there and hosted on Yahoo! (yahoo SE, ya know, as I am sure the 360 will get some free coverage) but it will never be something I would commit to solely. Pardon my misspellings.
April 5th, 2005 at 7:17 am
I tried it as well. It feels claustrophobic.
I doubt i even return to my own blog.
April 5th, 2005 at 10:51 am
I was curious what you did not like about msn spaces to vote 360 as being better? I can see that 360 has a few more features, but without any form of skinning/templates, it has a lot less to personalize.
As for 360, it appears to be more of cross of different things such as friendster, basic blogging and photo gallary. There are a few features that are interesting, but for plain blogging, I personally would take MSN spaces over 360.
April 5th, 2005 at 4:06 pm
Sounds pretty good, but I like owning my own design, or at least, not being branded by the Yahoo logo, unless of course they want to pay me for it that is.
I like the Launchcast Radio and have implemented that into my own site before, probably just as easily as you can on 360. I will say that if you are not a blogger, and on Yahoo alot anyway, this service will be right up your alley.
April 6th, 2005 at 3:25 am
I happen to like it because of the ‘Friendster’ aspect of it. Linking to people you know, and meeting their friends, and so on. It’s a community feeling that I totally ‘get’. I’m going to recommend to the beta team that they need to add skinning to the site.
April 7th, 2005 at 12:36 am
Sounds interesting. I signed up to be on the beta waiting list. I learn something new from your blog every day!
April 7th, 2005 at 1:08 am
Do u have a 360 invite? Pls give me one if u have!
April 7th, 2005 at 4:18 am
I have invites - email me your email address so I can send them.