Upside: For those who have a group of online friends who want to share information, Yahoo 360 has a wide range of community-building tools, such as Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Address Book. The Yahoo 360 My Friends page, for example, lets you view your Yahoo Messenger instant messages and see when friends are online.
Downside: One problem with trying to be all things to all people is that a company rarely offers a perfect solution in each offering. Yahoo 360 may turn out to be excellent in one or more areas, but individually, its services might not be as good as those offered by competing companies. For example, SixApart TypePad might be a better blogging service, Google Gmail might offer a better Web e-mail tool, and ICQ might be the best instant messenger client. With Yahoo 360, however, you're limited to Yahoo's own offerings. And if you're a business owner looking for a collaboration tool, Yahoo 360 is definitely not for you. Instead, consider Intranets.com, eUnify.net, or some other business-focused collaboration tool with more robust features. We suspect that, in an attempt to get ahead of Microsoft, Google and others, Yahoo may have crammed too many features into this one service.
Outlook: Yahoo 360 is currently in beta, and you can sign up for the service only if invited by a friend. The beta period could end at any time. Going forward, Yahoo plans to add even more services to Yahoo 360. The company is already a major online brand, so as with Microsoft, anything Yahoo does will garner a large number of users. However, Yahoo 360 will be fighting for users among a few dozen other online services. Check back in a few months to read our full review of the final service release.
Like this article? Click below to send it to your mobile for free!
Be one of the first to rate this product!