I started posting blog entries on my Yahoo 360 account back in August 20, 2006. My Vietnamese Sociology students from the Center for International Education and other university students at SaigonTech wanted me to post more on Yahoo 360 since they were all active there. I remember being very active there for a couple of years. I even met some friends from there as well and made some good contacts.
Sadly, Yahoo 360 will be shutdown. It is still a surprise to many young Vietnamese bloggers who have used Yahoo 360 religiously for the last 3-4 years. My students still use it. They are the ardent ones who will use it until the end which should come soon.
I have been lucky that I started SaigonNezumi.com before I created my Yahoo 360 accounts. I will not be affected much by the shutdown. Many of my 360 Friends have already added me to my Facebook account.
I do feel sorry for the many young 360 bloggers who have no place to move their blog entries too. I created a blog forum for my students but it is no way ready to handle anymore than 200 users. Not yet at least.
Yahoo 360 Plus does not seem a popular option as well. I posted this entry nearly a year ago:
The negative, since Yahoo 360plus will not be connected to the universal profile with other Yahoo products, could be the death blow to Yahoo 360 in Vietnam. The strength of Yahoo 360 is that it enabled Vietnamese bloggers to connect with other Yahoo 360 users around the world. If Yahoo 360plus just focuses on the Vietnamese market, many 360 users could move over to Facebook which is rapidly becoming popular among students and friends.
Unfortunately for you English speakers, Yahoo 360plus is only available in the Vietnamese language.
This is exactly what is happening. I am seeing many of the Vietnamese bloggers who write English move over to Facebook. They are very active as well. That includes my high school ICT students and former university students. I expect the same for other Yahoo 360 English speaking Vietnamese users as well.
Will they continue to blog? It is hard to say. I hate to say it, you can do quite a bit with Facebook now. If a developer adds a small blogging application to Facebook (I am not sure if one is there), that could be make Facebook a perfect replacement for Yahoo 360.
I am sure the Young Vietnamese IT geeks will have their opinions on this one.
Below is my last Yahoo 360 post:
It seems that Yahoo 360 will end soon. If you want to keep in contact with me, please visit the following sites:
1. SaigonNezumi.com (my blog) -> https://saigonnezumi.com
2. Facebook -> http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=678700482
3. Twitter -> http://twitter.com/saigonnezumi
If you need help finding a new blog site, please email me at: https://saigonnezumi.com/aboutkevinmillerjr/contact-kevin-miller-jr/ and I will help you find a new place to blog at.
Thank you for being my Yahoo 360 Friends. I hope to see you at another forum.
Kevin Miller, Jr. saigonnezumi
Farewell Yahoo 360!
It appears that Typepad has a Facebook blogit application to write blog postings within Facebook. Check it out at
http://www.typepad.com/features/blogit.html
You can always use other bloger like http://www.vinamaxshowbiz.com.
2 million Vietnamese Yahoo! 360 users will classify and migrate to different services. It can be roughly predicted that:
* Those who find Facebook Notes sufficient for their need will use it as it’s convenient to blog and enjoy the social network at once.
* Those who successfully copy their 360 entries to WordPress, Blogger, multiply (using several utilities) and want to blog with a professional attitude (not necessarily professional contents) will likely continue blogging there.
* Those who enjoy Vietnamese and colorful interfaces will be using Vietnamese blogging solutions.
* A growing number of users will use multiple services concurrently to satisfy their different needs. i.e. blog at one place, build social network at another place, update statuses on Twitter-like services, and read updates either on an RSS Reader, Blogger Dashboard or a Friendfeed-like service (like Linkhay)
* MySpace, orkut, Friendster, bebo… while popular, can’t really attract many users. Xanga and hi5 might attract a few.
* Two interesting services worth watching are Tumblr and Posterous due to their simplicity.
Hey Tai:
Can you please cite your sources on this one please? 🙂
My sheer personal prediction and I’m open to discussion. 🙂
Wow! Great site.
I’m a really Vietnamese people and living in Ho Chi Minh city.
Where do you live now?
It’s the beginning of the end for Yahoo 360! The official shutdown date has been set for July 13, 2009.
Yahoo made a big mistake here. They could have kept it alive with a Vietnamese team to keep 360 going. Or at least offer to sell it.
I’ve read the comments and I must agree with most of the things said about Yahoo, however, concerning the drop in user activity, it was their own fault. We faithful bloggers were told nearly 2 years ago that the site was being taken away for bigger and better things. Many users packed up and left at that point…some jumped ship to places like Facebook, MySpace, and Multiply. Problem was…it just didn’t have the community that had been built on 360. And honestly, for people like me, they liked the ability use the service without being a true tech wiz. If I wanted to change my background…I could do it without knowing how to use a CSS code thingy and it wasn’t designed by someone else…it was based on what I was feeling, and the theme I wanted for my page, or whatever I pulled out of my creative senses. Back in 2006 and 2007, I could post a blog entry and not fear that it would just disappear. My page morphed into a porch setting, where visitors would read my stuff, listen to a little music on the player, comment as if in a party setting with ease. I loved the parties we had. The other sites just don’t facilitate that sort of interaction. Some users had the slickest page looks and there was room to display creativity that many didn’t know we had in reaching large audiences. The 360 community was not perfect…lacked many of the newer applications that some demand…but it was truly a community. Each page being like the home of a good friend that you could stop by comment, share a coffee with and move on to the next residence.
And then Yahoo did the unthinkable…told us that they would give us something new. So, even though many threw up their hands and left…many stayed on. We waited, and waited…during that time, 360 became harder to use. It was like they had decided to just let the place rot down. The things we used to be able to do acquired more and more bugs…whatever we complained about went unheard. The site blog was never updated. I believe we went almost 8 months knowing nothing…and people left. Then the word came that the joy of blogging would return as we would be moving to the promised land of the new Yahoo brainchild…January, 2008. It came and went…and those that were waiting to see…although we’d opened other pages elsewhere….always stopped in just in case they weren’t lying. Fools that we were…accepted the circumstance of unrequited love. Crap!!! So since that time, with no more updates…we played around with the site maintaining contacts since early 2008…and all of a sudden we noticed that apps were being repaired, users that had given up were returning…what jerks we are. We didn’t know when it would all just blank out, but we had fun while it lasted. I mean, why would they open 360 Vietnam while shutting us down…with company changes…had they come to there senses? Would everyone come back? Maybe…
Now we’ve been given a date…finally. Our eviction is final on July 13th. The new platform stinks on Profiles. It just a mental institution white page, no blog comment notifications, no music player, and that creepy “Twitter,MySpace,Facebook” feel that we avoided “Mashed” up into one horrible joke of a solution. Just look around at the other sites…there are groups named 360 Refugees, Evicted by Yahoo360, 360 Anonymous, the 360 Gang. It’s really pathetic although I’m a member of one of those…okay, maybe two.
Anyway…I just wanted to say…there were tons of users who would have never left had Yahoo committed to the site and made it better…heck, just made it work again. They don’t value their users in the least bit. A year to develop a file 13 for our content. It wasn’t all the other sites…that’s why we chose 360 in the first place. And from the length of this comment..you can see this user is really in need of a new place to vent. lol (sorry about this)
And they are STILL promising a “solution”. They just want to dump us all.