Review: Yahoo! Mash, a new social networking site

My Mash profile showing the main column.

My Flicker module.

Saturday morning I read about Mash, Yahoo's new social networking site, and decided to try it out. Mash is still in beta and accounts are still by invitation only but somehow by Saturday afternoon I had an invite from Yahoo. I have only played with it for a few hours but I like it and it has a lot of potential.

Yahoo Mash is still very new but I like it better than MySpace and it is a lot better than Yahoo 360 however it lacks a number of features, especially when compared with Facebook.

In a way Mash blends features from MySpace and Facebook. Like MySpace you can customize the look and style of your profile but unlike MySpace there are limits and there are some basic point-and-click ways to customize your page. One thing Mash lacks in this area that would be nice is the ability to upload a background image. You can link to an image but it would be easier and nicer to be able to have Yahoo store a few images to set at you pleasure. You do not seem to be able to just add any CSS code that you want. This is the main reason MySpace pages often are so horrible to look at. People get CSS code from friends or web sites and just dump it into MySpace which frequently leads to garish looking pages.

Mash looks like Facebook in that it has a cleaner and more organized look than MySpace. Mash also has modules which are like Facebook's applications. There are a limited number of modules right now but there are several that are very useful. The Blog Module takes any RSS 2.0 feed and puts it onto your Mash page. There is also a Flickr module and I saw a few YouTube modules. The Twitter module is just so-so, links in Twits are not clickable. Currently there are about 30 modules listed as popular, but Yahoo says they are opening up module development to third parties so hopefully more modules will be available soon.

Also like Facebook with Mash you can set who can see what and edit what is on your page. On Mash friends are categorized as Best Friends, Family or Just Friends. Then under Settings > Permissions you can set who can see your profile and post to your Guestbook (among other things). Under Settings you can also block people from your Mash page. It would be nice to be able to group friends but maybe Yahoo will add this ability in the future.

One tip, go to Settings > Simple URL and activate your simple URL. It will give you a web address that's easy to use, like mine: http://mash.yahoo.com/mydree . If you would like an invitation to Yahoo's Mash then send me your email address ( mydree(at)yahoo(dot)com ) and I will send you an invitation. I'm not sure how many invitations that I get but I will do the best that I can.

Mash is far from perfect but it is a good first step in the right direction, check it out if you are at all interested in social networking web sites.

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