Over the past two years there has been a lot of discussion about the closure of Yahoo!7 360° and the transition to our new profiles experience that we’ve had in the works. Today, we’re able to firmly say that on July 13th, 2009 Yahoo!7 360° will be closing down and you’ll be asked to move into your new profile on Yahoo!7, by July 12th, 2009.

While we know that many of you have faithfully used this service over the past few years, our goal has been to find a way to unify your social experience and connections across all of Yahoo!7 and anywhere you travel across the Web. So, while we’re sad to say that we will no longer be supporting Yahoo!7 360°, we’re excited about this larger plan and hope you’ll transition over and be a part of it, too.

We also want to reiterate our commitment to preserving your blog content. We have been working to make sure we put the right mechanisms in place so that you can move your content and minimise disruption. It is with this thought in mind that we’re happy to introduce a new blogging feature that is integrated into your profile. You can find more information on this below.

With your new profile on Yahoo!7 you’ll be able to connect with other people on Yahoo!7, and share your updates and activity with the people you meet on the Web.

While we know many of you are frustrated by this decision, we’d like to address some of the main questions you might have. If your question has not been addressed, please see our Help pages and list of frequently asked questions for more information. If you’d like to discuss this change, or, ask a question that was not addressed in the help pages or in the content below, please visit the Profiles News Blog at: http://www.yprofileblog.com/. Though, I can’t promise to answer every question, I can promise to create additional posts on common issues and trends to make sure “hot topics” are addressed.

Why is Yahoo!7 360° closing?

Though 360° gained a strong core of loyal users (you) who enjoyed the service, Yahoo!7 has been reprioritising some products to help us deliver the best possible experiences to consumers. The decision to close Yahoo!7 360° and transition users to Profiles is part of this larger strategy, but we had been waiting until we had an alternative solution that we could offer to our community of Yahoo!7 360° users until we officially shut down 360°.

It’s been almost two years since you first announced 360° was closing—why shut it down now?

Before we could retire 360°, we had to find a sustainable and adequate solution for your personal information. We know how important your blog entries and profile information is to each of you, and we wanted to be able to maintain the integrity of this content. Rather than rushing the process and risking data loss, we worked on a broader solution across Yahoo!7 that would meet our future goal of providing you the best possible social experience while at the same time protecting your privacy and data. We’re happy to say that we now have a solution that satisfies all of these requirements.

What is going to happen to my blog?

We know that many of you decided to blog in 360° because you enjoyed sharing your content with the people you met on Yahoo!7, which is why we’ve created two options for your blog and all of its content.

The first is: you can start blogging on your profile on Yahoo!7 — we’ve created an all new blogging tool that will let you post content and also allows you to integrate photos right from Flickr. Once you create an entry, your post is automatically pushed out in your updates stream to your connections, saving you the hassle of sending out links to your latest entries.

A second option that we’re providing you is the ability to export your blog and all of your content and to any of the supported blogging systems (don’t worry — they’re popular sites like WordPress, Blogger, and MoveableType). We’ll even generate an archive with all of your entries and photos and will send you a link to download the archive.

First you shut down Mash, now you shut down 360° — why should I give profiles a shot?

We understand you might have doubts — in the past few years, you’ve seen a couple of social sites come and go, and it means a lot to us that you’ve stuck around while we’ve tweaked each experience. Know that we’re committed to having a universal profile across Yahoo!7, and we’re committed to working with you to improve and evolve this profile to make sure it’s what YOU want to use. That doesn’t mean we can implement every piece of feedback you provide, but it does mean we’re listening, and we are going to do our best to make sure your interests are incorporated into future releases and versions of your profile.

What about customisation and photos? On 360° I can change the look and feel and upload multiple photos—can I do this with profiles?

At this time, your new profile does not have all the features and functionality of your 360° profile. However, we are looking at incorporating new ways of expressing yourself through your profile.

In regards to uploading multiple photos, your profile on Yahoo!7 allows for only one primary photo for now. This is also something we’re looking at improving/expanding based on your feedback.

We know that you will have lots of questions about 360° closing and how it will affect each of you. Be sure to check out the Customer Care help pages (including the FAQ’s) to help make this transition as smooth as possible.

Thank you.

Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager

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