Explore Your Social Networks

Explore Your Social Networks

Use Yahoo! 360 to stay in touch with friends, family, and coworkers while viewing their social connections.

You've probably heard the famous theory that says everyone on earth can be connected to anyone else through six degrees of separation. For example, if you really wanted to get in touch with Bill Gates through friends, you could go to someone you know, they could go to someone they know, and you'd eventually reach Bill through no more than six contacts. These relationships make up your social network, and Yahoo! 360 is an attempt to map and expose those connections.

In addition, Yahoo! 360 is a place to keep your friends, family, and coworkers up-to-date with what's happening in your life, as well as a way for you to see what they're up to. It's also a way to meet your friends' friends, and perhaps meet some people you wouldn't have otherwise met. Some of the features you'll find at Yahoo! 360 include:

Your personal profile

Assemble an autobiography and list cities you've lived in, places you've worked, and schools where you've studied. You can also put together lists of favorite movies, music, and television shows.

Weblog

You can keep a personal public journal that will keep your friends up-to-date with your recent thoughts and activities.

Friends list

Assemble a list of your contacts that are on Yahoo! 360 and stay in touch with them.

Yahoo! Network

You can integrate Yahoo! Network data into your personal profile, including Yahoo! Photos you've uploaded, Yahoo! Groups you belong to, and your Yahoo! Local reviews.

Whether you arrive at Yahoo! 360 by invitation or by signing up at http://360.yahoo.com, you should take a few steps before you start connecting with others to get the most out of your Yahoo! 360 space.

Create a Profile

Your Yahoo! 360 profile is your public face to others. As people run into your weblog or see your comments on other weblogs, they'll be able to view your profile to learn more about you. When you log into Yahoo! 360, you'll find your profile page full of empty yellow boxes, as shown in Figure.

This page is a blank canvas that you can begin to fill in with details about yourself. A good place to start is the Edit Basic Info link on the left side of the page. From there, you can enter your name and a nickname, and decide how you want your identity displayed to others.

You can include other bits of information, such as your current location, age, birthday, and primary email address. Most settings allow you to specify a privacy setting, as shown in Figure, and you'll find similar settings throughout Yahoo! 360.

The default value for information entered into Yahoo! 360 is "just me" (private), and you might want to leave this value alone until you're finished with your Yahoo! 360 space and ready to connect with others. You can always click the Edit Basic Info link later to change your basic info privacy settings.

Once your basic info is set, click Save to return to your profile page. Because photos are used extensively throughout Yahoo! 360, a good next step is uploading a personal photo. The personal photo space is fairly large, so if you'd like to include an image without any distortion, create a personal photo that's 190 pixels wide by 245 pixels high. The photo will need to be in the standard JPEG format. You can upload up to four different photos, and people reading your profile will be able to click on thumbnails to see them at the 190 x 245 size.

A blank Yahoo! 360 profile

Choosing a privacy setting for a piece of information

With your personal photos in place, click the Create Profile link at the bottom of your profile page. This is where your autobiography begins, and you can tell people as little or as much about yourself as you'd like. Yahoo! 360 provides a space for describing yourself, forms for listing places you've lived, worked, or gone to school, a space to list your home page, a way to list languages you speak, and a spot for your favorite quote. Click Save when you're finished, and you should start to see your profile page taking shape.

Click Share Lists to add lists of things you're interested in. These lists help you connect with other Yahoo! 360 members by interest. You can list general interests, favorite books, movies, music, and television shows.

Finally, click Edit Contact Settings on the left side of your profile page and decide how you'd like to receive messages from other Yahoo! 360 members. You can allow anyone to contact you, just people you've designated as friends, or friends of friends within your network. You can also adjust the settings for Yahoo! 360 friend invitations and Yahoo! Messenger settings. Now that you have a home base set and you've decided how you'd like to be contacted, you can start connecting with others.

Start Blogging

A blog (short for weblog), is a public journal that can be a way to share opinions, a place to describe recent activities, or simply a space to chronicle interesting things you find on the Web. To set up your blog, go to your profile page and click the "Start a Blog" link and give your new weblog a title and description. You can also choose to activate a Simple URL for your blog. The default URLs for Yahoo! 360 weblogs aren't easy to pass around. Here's what a standard Yahoo! 360 blog URL looks like:

	http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-W.nEFiYoc6l2SMTF4MyXa0E-

But you can enable a Simple URL that contains your Yahoo! ID and is much more manageable, something like this:

	http://blog.360.yahoo.com/yhoohacks

Yahoo! 360 uses the first, more complex URL as the default, so that your Yahoo! ID isn't immediately available to others. If you don't mind sharing your Yahoo! ID with others, though, you can have a much simpler URL to share with friends and family.

Next, choose who can see your blog: anyone (public), friends in your network, or just you (completely private). If you choose the public option, you can also publish a site feed. With a site feed, others can subscribe to your weblog through My Yahoo! or other RSS newsreaders. Finally, choose who can comment on your posts and click the Begin Blog button.

You'll find yourself at your weblog, without any posts. Click the Compose New Entry link on the left to write your first message to the world. Just as with email, each post has a title and a body (entry content). In most browsers you can format the text of your post with the controls just above the Entry Content area. Figure shows some of the formatting options available, including bold, italics, links, smileys, and lists.

Posting to a Yahoo! 360 blog

If you're familiar with HTML, you can skip the formatting buttons and write the HTML yourself by selecting the View HTML Source option. Be aware that your HTML options are limited; you'll need to brush up on what's allowed at Yahoo! 360 by clicking the "Learn more" link under the Entry Content area.

If you include a photo with your post, the photo will appear at the top of the post when it's published. The photo will be scaled to 284 pixels wide once it's uploaded to Yahoo! 360. The photo will appear directly under the title and above the main body of the post once the post is published.

Once you're happy with your entry, click Post This Entry to make the post available on your blog. Who can read your words will depend on your privacy settings. An occasional blog entry is an unobtrusive way to keep friends, coworkers, and family up to speed on what's happening in your life. Plus, your friends and family can add their own comments to your posts, which keeps a public dialogue going.

Another option available on your Yahoo! 360 blog is a tool for building a blogroll. A blogroll is simply a list of links to other blogs and sites you enjoy. To add sites to your blogroll, click the My Blog link at the top of any Yahoo! 360 page and click the Edit Blogroll link. From there, you can add sites by typing in a site's name and URL. If you're moving from another weblog service and already have a blogroll, you might want to automate this process [Hack #62].

Connect with Friends

The strength of Yahoo! 360 lies in your connections with other members. As you add people to your friends list, you'll see their recent activity and they'll see yours. Figure shows a Yahoo! 360 home page listing the latest information from friends.

A Yahoo! 360 home page with friends' current activity

There are a few different ways to build your own friends list. You can click the Home link at the top of any Yahoo! 360 page and then click the "Invite a Friend" link from the left side of the home page. From there, you can send an invitation email and personal message to someone you know. If she accepts your invitation, joins Yahoo! 360, builds a profile, and starts posting to a weblog, she'll be listed as a contact, and you'll see her latest activity on your home page.

Another way to spot friends is by browsing your existing friends' lists. If we're all connected by six degrees, you shouldn't have to surf other friends' lists long before you find people you know. You can also click the Search link at the top of any Yahoo! 360 page to search for people you know, or you can enter specific criteria such as location, age, or schools attended to find people you don't know (yet).

You can also click My Page at the top of any Yahoo! 360 page to get to your profile. If you've assembled lists of books, music, and movies you enjoy, you can click those titles to see other Yahoo! 360 members who share that interest. For example, if you've listed Kraftwerk as a musical favorite, simply click the Kraftwerk link to see others who like the German electronic group. If you see someone you'd like to add to your friends list, click the Invite link next to his name. If he accepts your invitation, he'll be added to your friends list, and you'll see his latest activity on your home page.

In addition to weblog posts and comments, you can communicate privately with other Yahoo! 360 members through your Mailbox. As you'd expect, you can reach your Yahoo! 360 Mailbox by clicking the Mailbox link at the top of any Yahoo! 360 page. Whenever you see someone you'd like to talk with, click the Send Message link next to her name. The messages are similar to email, but your email address isn't exposed in the process. This way, you can contact people with as little or as much anonymity as you'd like.