Mash....A Long way to go...

Yahoo's second attempt of having a stable social networking site was opened this week to users outside Yahoo for testing purposes. I find it pretty tough to manage my active facebook and orkut profiles and I don't think I would have room for more unless something 'wow' comes up on that front. So I was absolutely disinterested when a mail saying 'XYZ had made a profile for you on Mash' popped up in my mailbox.

Yahoo's first attempt at social networking christened 'Yahoo 360' was a big failure considering its been around for more than 2 years now compared with the likes of News Corps's Myspace, Facebook, Bebo or Google's Orkut which have managed to attract tens of millions of users worldwide. Without any expectations, I decided to check out the 'Mash' interface anyway and find out if Yahoo had anything new to offer.

Mash's USP as of now seems to be the fact that it allows people to edit others profiles. For those frightened at the prospect, there is a flag in the settings to allow you to choose who can edit your profile. Apart from this feature, the interface of Mash would instantly remind users of facebook. The 'Applications' of Facebook become 'Modules' of Mash (Very few modules are active currently), 'News Feed' of Facebook becomes 'Pulse' page in Mash. Customizable CSS feature offered by Mash is a definite plus and will surely be a big hit especially amongst bloggers. Mash is still very much in its testing phase and we would know with time how it decides to differentiate itself from others. For now though, I'm pretty much happy with my orkut and facebook accounts.