Hey everyone! It's been a while since I've posted on Yahoo! 360. I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I had worked on Yahoo! 360, left to take a job in Canada, and then left that job to come back to Yahoo! again. Well, I can now officially talk about the product I worked on - BravoNation - and I want to give you Yahoo! 360 users a special invitation.

What is BravoNation, you ask? BravoNation is an achievements community website and API platform. Andy Baio has written up a pretty in-depth overview of the system, and Gordon talks about it a little bit on Yahoo! Next* as well, so you can read all about it there.

For those of you that aren’t so much techies as you are gamers, think “Xbox Live Achievements, but for community websites.” (For those of you that aren’t gamers, think “the bastard child you get when you cross a thank you e-card with Pokemon or Magic: The Gathering,” or something like that.) If it sounds like there’s a lot of gaming elements in the product, it’s because there is - most of the team are huge gamers, and we adopted a lot of gaming principles into the application. It’ll be interesting to see what crosses over well and what doesn’t. It’ll also be interesting how the product - and our roles - will change and evolve over the next couple of months. And by “interesting,” I mean a mix between “exciting” and “petrifying.”

So basically, because the product is so new, we're going to need a lot of people to help test the product out as well as give feedback and constructive criticism. If you'd like a special inviation to BravoNation, send an e-mail invitation to ehsiung@yahoo-inc.com. Thanks!

Hey guys, it's me coming out of the woodwork again. (So, here's a summary from me in the past six months: I worked on Yahoo! 360, I left Yahoo! 360 to work at a start-up in Canada. The start-up in Canada didn't do so well, so I moved back home. Parents made me want to cut myself, so I moved to San Francisco and started another job within Yahoo!, this time in San Francisco at the previously mentioned Brickhouse. So, no, I did not work on Mash.)

Before I start running my mouth like I'm wonton to do, I'm going to write the following disclaimers: All the opinions are mine and mine only, although I have a TON of insight to Yahoo! 360. Mash, notsomuch, although I am friends with everyone on the team AND Will A. from the blogs was my former manager when I worked on Yahoo! Photos, years and years and years ago. Jesus, have I seriously worked here for years? I guess I have.

I'm also going to write a bunch of assumptions, stuff I don't know 100% about, and throw in some opinion too. Because the current Mosh team doesn't know about this, if they ask me to take some stuff down, I'm going to, because hey, I'm still good friends with my old team, even if we're not on the same team anymore.

So, Yahoo! Mash.

Basically, Yahoo! Mash is similar to MySpace and Facebook where you make a profile page for yourself, but a little different where you can actually edit the pages of your friends (but you can change the settings on whether you want to do this or not.) You can also install "modules," where people can make little applications and you can install them directly on your page. It's similar to applications on Facebook, not so much on MySpace. It's a little buggy right now, but I can't hate on that, since the first week Yahoo! 360 was live was a trainwreck and a half.

What Mash doesn't have is a blog. I'm a big fan of blogging, obviously. A big part of the 360 community - the early one, anyway - is that people communicated to each other through their blogs. I'm not sure how they're going to address that - hey, it's not my job to say anyway - but if I were a betting man, I'd suppose that that is the reason why they haven't killed Yahoo! 360 and replaced it with Yahoo! Mash. People would get pretty pissed, right?

A lot of people are asking whether Mash is going to replace Yahoo! 360. And to be honest - I don't know. (The fact that 360 AND Mash still exists and they didn't just shut down 360 immediately say a lot.) I WILL tell you that the entire team on Yahoo! 360 worked on Yahoo! Mash, which is why you haven't seen updates from 360 in a couple of months. Truth of the matter is that it wasn't a popular product by Yahoo! standards, especially compared to MySpace and Facebook. The Wall Street Journal once called Yahoo! 360 "a failure." (That was a pretty crummy day at work.) And you know who reads the Wall Street Journal? Executives. Long story short, a drastic change was needed, and here you are, Yahoo! Mash.

I could write a novel on why I think 360 isn't as successful as it could be or could have been, so all I have to say is this: I hope Yahoo! Mash, or hell, even Yahoo! 360, gets the promotion it needs and deserves. I always envied how much attention Yahoo! Answers got - huge promotions at New York Times Square, a big link on yahoo.com. I hope they get smarter tying information with other information you have throughout Yahoo!. I hope something, whether it be 360 or Mash, becomes a true platform, rather than a site where you just make a wacky page for a hot second, and then go somewhere else.

But hey, what do I know? I'm just a web developer that makes twelve dollars an hour. ;)

PS: Yahoo! Mash was originally going to be called Yahoo! Mosh, but it turns out someone came out with a social network site called Mosh a month or two before they released.

PPS: If you want an invite, send me a message with an e-mail address to send an invite to.

And, I quit the job in Canada and am back in California permanently. More to come later. Maybe somewhere that isn't as public.