UPDATE: Yahoo 360 Product Page here

So, a day early due to leaks, early word is just coming out on Yahoo!'s new blog publishing tool.

Codename? "Mingle", an obvious tip of the hat to the integration of social networking functionality. As I said in Daithí Ó hAnluain's OJR article (wow, talk about serendipity!):

"The question is ... is it already too late? Content distribution is gravitating toward feeds, and feed readers are integrating social networking. Newspaper sites might be able to integrate SN via FOAF, or similar open frameworks, but the likelihood of a consumer inviting 30 friends to a newspaper site seems... remote."

The new tool, officially named Yahoo! 360 and due March 29th, 2005, takes the MSN Spaces approach of exposing existing data that Yahoo! members might already have on the platform, such as pictures from Yahoo! Photo (and my $10 says Flickr too), Messenger, Address Book and eventually MSFT Outlook.

Will this move force smaller companies that don't have 165MM users, from sites like Tribe.net, to aggregator companies like Newsgator (and of course, SixApart) to cooperate via FOAF (even if Seth Godin doesn't get it), XFN, or some other standard? Pincus is calling for cooperation, just as he (and I) did at the last Kelsey conf. I'll be on a panel around social networking and local with the folks from Judy's Book and InsiderPages at the next show in April; should be timely and interesting.

There's that other question in my mind too. You know, the one that asks just how much of our Attention.xml'esq data Yahoo! (et al.) will be motivated to share with us. (Let alone the Reviews, Lists, etc.) Perhaps this is an issue we can all come together on?

Congratulations to all of the Yahoo! teams involved with this; and an even bigger congrats for being the first to complete the (first of a variety of) microcontent stack(s).

Now, where's that Beta sign-up?!