Yahoo’s New SNS

Yahoo is getting in on the SNS game with a new platform that allows users to mess with their friends profiles. Still in invitation-only Beta, users will be able to open up their profile page to friends - enabling them to tinker with and add everything from games and widgets, to embarrassing photos and crazy colors. Users can also design pages for prospective members by adding colors, text, RSS feeds and content modules before they ever even log in. Aesthetically similar to Flickr, the site utilizes easy to use drag and drop features to make customization super easy.

However, what’s most interesting about the site is it’s lack of typical social networking features such as blogging, emailing, and photo storage.

Wired Magazine reports:

Yahoo’s ambition isn’t to make a stand-alone social network to compete with the Facebooks and MySpaces of the online world. Photo management, blogging and private communication are offloaded to other properties in Yahoo’s stable. It’s not integrated right now, but Yahoo says Mash will eventually become a layer on top of its various web services — tying them together with a social glue.

“We see it one day being integrated into other spaces across the Yahoo network,” says Yahoo’s Terrell Karlsten. “Eventually, it will become a feature inside other services. For example, it’s possible that you’ll log into Yahoo Mail and see your profile along with all of your friends’ profiles in your contact list.”

In other words, Mash isn’t the platform, Yahoo is the platform.

Wired: Yahoo’s New Social Network Puts You (and Your Friends) in Charge