If you didn't know, Yahoo! 360° was launched in the year 2005. After 4 years of just 'being there', it will be discontinued on July 13, 2009.

Yahoo! keeps on trying to upstage the major players in each segment, be it Yahoo! Mail or Yahoo! Mobile OneSearch. This time around it tried its luck with Social Networking with Yahoo! 360°. But, just like Yahoo! Mash, this too is being discontinued.

Yahoo! 360° would officially close on July 13, 2009. The reason for this closure, as blogged by the staff, is that Yahoo! wants to "focus their efforts on the new profile on Yahoo".

Yahoo! is providing an option to the users on Yahoo! 360° to transfer all their content such as photos, blog posts to their new Yahoo! Profiles. Blogs can also be transferred to other blog systems like WordPress.

Yahoo! 360° was a good start by Yahoo! but considering the popularity of other social networking platforms like Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, it would have been difficult to survive. In the absence of such major players in the social networking area, Yahoo! 360° might have made it big. It had all the right ingredients and integration with the other Yahoo! Services was something which made users try it out.

To check out what's new in Yahoo! Profiles, refer this.

To read more about Yahoo! 360°, the reasons for the discontinuation, refer the Yahoo! 360° Product Blog.

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