Yahoo! Forces Another Platform Into Retirement, This Time Y! 360

The head of state at Yahoo!, Jerry Yang, is making changes at the Internet giant he was asked to commandeer this year after the long-expected departure of Terry Semel. The company, co-founded by Yang, has in the past few months undergone a thorough examination by the new CEO, and he has thus far signed off on the shutdown and recalibration of a number of operations, the most notable being the vast-yet-totally-uncool photo host/service, Yahoo! Photos.

Now he’s told his fellow Yahoo!’s to bid adieu to the company’s half-assed attempt at a “social network”, Yahoo! 360. Good riddance, we say.

There’s clear reason why Yahoo!’s CEO said early last week that he’d be bringing the hammer down on 360. It’s not really any good, firstly. Secondly, it just ain’t got enough umph to get it to where Yahoo! would want/need it to be in order for it to be worth the trouble of development and maintenance. Besides, if Yang had to choose between Y! 360 and the company’s new, (uniquely) open social networking service, Mash (which has unfortunately failed to get the press ebullient and buzzing about its “possibilities”, thus far), we think the latter’s got a better shot at becoming something, if anything at all.

There’s a lesson to learn from the failure of Yahoo! 360. Well, okay, let me rephrase. There’s a lesson for Yahoo! to learn (and Yang & Co likely have) from 360’s failure. It is that there’s really nothing that will ever come of an idea consisting of fundamentally conflicting components: big dreams and outdated, expired practices.

On paper, 360 looked (somewhat) okay. It gave one quite a number of pieces to work with and mold and fit to one’s liking. Sort of. But at the end of the day, the puzzle looked half-baked, and it simply did not catch on. So it languished. For a while. For a long while. And now it’s headed for a forced retirement. Which is good, because it was all but dead weight hanging off Yahoo!’s backend, and no one needs that, right?

No, no ones needs that.

Well, that about wraps this little nugget up. If you just so happen to be part of the Yahoo! 360 “network”, we suggest packing up your stuff (whatever that means exactly) and moving on. Time for a fresh start.

Speaking of fresh, we hear Yahoo!’s new Mash site has plenty of vacant spots available. Unfortunately, if you haven’t been invited to the exclusive party, you can’t get in, so…I don’t know, perhaps you can pass the time doing something else. Like playing in the great big sandboxes that are MySpace and Facebook. And Bebo, too, if you wish.