An inside look at Yahoo! Mash

With a sprinkling of MySpace and a dusting of Facebook, Yahoo! Mash comes out to grab some social networking pageviews.

The new Yahoo! Mash social network has features that are similar to those in the popular Facebook and MySpace. There are different widgets and modules like Flickr RSS feeds, Guestbooks as well as Blog and Astrology modules that can be placed on personal profile pages. Personal pages can also be customized with color themes and background images to fit in with your own 'personal brand identity'.

Friends can actually start pages for each other as a way to invite them to join the service. An item called Pulse, like Facebook's news feed, gives a roundup of what friends have been up to on Mash and the Twitter-esque Guestbook also allows you to communicate with page owners and friends by sending a short message.

However, the interesting aspect comes with the ability to edit each others pages, Wikipedia style. New modules and information can be added to friends pages, mashing it up completely. Don't like the fact that friends can do this? Settings can be made so certain areas cannot be touched.

Is Mash set up to become a Facebook killer? Well, it has just been released in a testing mode, and does seem to have that loose cluttered look that MySpace has, so don't bet on it yet. Look out for a 3rd party development platform to launch within the next few months that will open Mash up for a whole new experience. We wil be watching Mash closely over the next while to see how things pan out.

For upcoming news and more on Yahoo! Mash, stay tuned to the Mash blog. Mash is currently open by invite only.

Tags: facebook, mash, myspace, social, social-network, twitter, yahoo-mash