Yahoo Stops Mash-ing

Yahoo admits failure and will close the doors on Mash, its social networking site, on September 29.

If you were a fan of Mash, Yahoo’s social networking venture, you should already know the news. As of September 29, the service will no longer exist. The company has already written to members, advising them to save any data they have on the service.

Mash lasted just about a year, but never managed to gain any traction against the big social networks, in spite of Yahoo’s clout.

The end of Mash won’t affect Yahoo 360, the company says. As of the end of September, any remaining links to Mash will go directly to the Yahoo site.

However, this probably won’t be the end of the story. In a statement the company said:

“As you may remember, we launched Mash as an experimental profile service with the goal of providing an interactive and social way of connecting with others.”

“Yahoo has announced we will soon be launching a new profile experience to work across the network, in the effort to make all of Yahoo! more social.”

That “experience” will be Yahoo Open Strategy, first announced in April, which has ties to Google’s Open Social, according to the Financial Times.