According to reports, Yahoo! invited a select number of users on Friday to dry test its Mash social networking service, which it has described as an entirely separate venture from Yahoo! 360, and will incorporate invite-only personal information and image swapping between friends and family.
The venture, which is Yahoo's first major foray into social networking, will aim to close ground on News Corporation-owned MySpace, Bebo and Facebook, by drawing upon the digital giant's 500m-strong monthly global user base.
It is understood that Mash, which is still in the early stages of testing, will eventually integrate a range of Yahoo!'s digital applications and create an invite-only personal profile page for both public and private use that will operate in a similar way to Facebook and Bebo.
Will Aldrich, who is head of the development of Yahoo! Mash, said on that the service would be a "new approach to online profiles", offering extensive privacy controls, customised profile service and a "growing gallery of [applications]".
However, Yahoo! has admitted that Mash's development is still "raw", and that the service had bugs which it needed to eliminate before it can be developed further.
In the last five years Yahoo! has lost substantial ground to Google in the search market, and will that hope Mash can revive its fortunes by attracting Google users. The move is one of a number of initiatives the online giant is making to silence critics and revive its fortunes.
Last week, Yahoo! signed a deal with Bebo to sell display advertising for the social networking site in the UK and Ireland.
In a statement, Yahoo! said: "Ongoing product innovation is important to Yahoo! and we continue to test various products and services to gain feedback from our users. Mash, an experimental profile service, is an example of this ongoing test."
_1.jpg)
.jpg)
