A Yahoo company employee mistakenly sent an e-mail to New York Times reporter Brad Stone informing him about his new profile for a new, unannounced service called Yahoo Mash. After Stone clicked on the link to visit the profile, he couldn"t get past a log-in page. Yahoo representatives later acknowledged to Stone that the service isn"t yet open to anyone outside of Yahoo and that the invitation was sent by mistake. A Yahoo spokeswoman noted that the service is at an "alpha" stage of testing in which only Yahoo employees are participating.
Several times over the past year, high-ranking Yahoo executives have publicly acknowledged that the Yahoo 360 social network, introduced in March 2005, has been a disappointment and needs a major overhaul. Considering that this alpha service apparently includes the creation of profiles for individuals, it would be safe to assume it is some sort of social network. Yahoo 360 doesn"t appear in Nielsen/NetRatings" top 10 list of social-networking sites in the U.S. during August. The list is topped by News Corporporation"s MySpace with 60.3 million unique visitors. Facebook, which Yahoo reportedly tried unsuccessfully to buy last year for $1 billion, came in second with 19.2 million unique visitors, a robust 117% increase over August of last year, outpacing MySpace"s 23% growth clip.