People Search Digest

With the social network balloon rapidly blowing up, it was only a matter of time before search engine giant Yahoo! launched their version. Yahoo! reportedly made a bid of $1 billion for Facebook last year, and similar reports were made of them trying to purchase Bebo. Rumors of their new social site have been circulating for months. Mash was previously only available to Yahoo! employees as a closed beta service, but when a New York Times reporter was accidentally notified of the service on September 12, it launched two days later as an invite-only beta.

Mash, originally named “Mosh,” is Yahoo!’s first social networking site. It stands out from other popular sites by allowing users to edit their friends’ profiles. In fact, with the current beta version users invite their friends to the site by creating profiles for them. The concept is similar to WikiYou where any number of users can edit a single page or article.

Thankfully, a user also has the ability to limit the amount of editing that can done to their page, or even block the feature all together (we all have that annoying friend who would definitely take advantage of this liberty). Another neat thing about the site is users have the ability to customize their own page with in-home and third-party add-ons, similar to Facebook. When you first sign up, the default profile includes a “Mash pet,” as well as a short questionnaire and video-sharing space. Yahoo! hopes to add a multitude of other applications before the service nears its post-beta release.

For now, it remains an exclusive invite-only site, but if you’re interested, go check out Mash and sign up for an invitation. Provided you get in, you will be able to set up profiles for your friends and invite them too. But please, don’t be too mean when you make your friends’ profiles; it’s not proper Mashlike behavior.