Recent updates to the profiles service

October 31st, 2008 at 1:40 pm

Thanks for putting the information back in! That makes everything so much easier for everyone.

October 31st, 2008 at 1:52 pm

Helpful…sort of. Tell us, please, for those users with alias profiles, will this also enable them access to these aliases by the means listed above? That seems more to the good of the user base than just catering to one products needs…

October 31st, 2008 at 3:35 pm

I finally capitulated, and did the whole update thing with my profile. Needless to say, all of my previous “information” was not there. I had personalized my profile. I was fine with the way it was before.

I am glad the Yahoos at Yahoo are committed to this new profile, because I am not. Still. Only the barest of information is there. I dont mean my Real Identity, I mean my personality. I had put a lot of thought into my profile. As had many others. In in all the inifinit wisdom of Yahoo, you did not show all the millions of users the simple common courtesy of asking if we wanted this change. You just did it, and tell us all we have to like or lump it, because the other is gone.

I am still not happy with this New format. I dont think I ever will be.

It sux bilge water!

Raven

October 31st, 2008 at 4:04 pm

So far, everything I have had an issue with is being addressed.
The only thing I’m having a problem with is accepting “Invitations to Connect” with Firefox. I can’t. The “Accept” or “Ignore” buttons only work with Internet Explorer.
I run Yahoo groups, and also would appreciate seeing a date when a profile was started/last updated.
Keep this up and I’ll be one happy camper. So thanks

October 31st, 2008 at 4:29 pm

Hi, very pleasing and ete catching scheme. Tho my concern is irrespective of profile info, we cant see since when any person is a member of yahoo. earlier it helped a lot in way that with one look at registeration date one could see that one isnt talking to a newbie lamer in a chat room. nothing wrong in not having the date or update info in a profile. i hope nobody will mind if it comes back again.
thanks

October 31st, 2008 at 5:03 pm

you at yahoo have your internal problems. we feel sorry
for you. you have our sympathy. an armed hostile
takeover of yahoo? i hope the sempel family
is safe. and others. take your time
in getting it all arranged to fit the laws
and acts of legislators around the world. to fit the laws of
the united nations also. glasnost and perestroika to you too.

October 31st, 2008 at 6:06 pm

I like the idea of a single profile for a single individual, but one which offers far more control in terms of selective exposure to various groups.
We have a closed Yahoo! Group in which we would like to assert that everyone identifies themselves by their real name. But we don’t want to require much more than that – certainly not year of birth, etc.
Some people will want to share more with certain contacts – or “connections” than with others.

My suggestion: for *each field* offered on a Yahoo! profile, give the user control over who/what can see it. AND make this control include *collective* entities – in my case, the one that matters is *specific Yahoo! Groups*. In other words, if I want to be a member of Group X, I understand that I will have to make my Real Name accessible to members of Group X.

Perhaps people are willing to selectively offer more of their profile to Owners of Moderators of groups they hope to join – in order to show their bona fides. Included amongst this might be the date of joining Yahoo! – the wish of a previous commenter in this thread.

I understand the privacy concerns, and the possibility that this may have caused Yahoo! to act without warning (to avoid opportunistic data farming).

Solution Summary: Heavily enhance on a field-by-field level the ability to make profile information accessible to various parties – both individual and group, where groups may include lists defined by Yahoo! memberships, like specific Yahoo! Groups or roles within same.

October 31st, 2008 at 6:14 pm

Melissa, it would still be helpful if there was a way that we could get our aliases separated from the primary ID. What I mean is a way to remove those aliases and make separate IDs without having to delete the names and wait untill the name becomes available again to make them again.
P. S. Thanks again for your help.

October 31st, 2008 at 7:08 pm

Its a start at least, but may I ask again why we have to have the Alies profiles linked? Its nice to see that you have listened but at the same time those of us who have Alies profiles want them to be totally separate.

Most of us don’t want these other names to link to our main proifle, if we did then we would just have one profile and one name. The benefit of Yahoo in the past was that you could have many RP characters or many facets of your life with one Email. That way you could maintain an RP with three separate characters without having anyone pester you about the others or could peruse some form of online relationship or friendship without letting other people know about parts of your life that you consider private or separate.

Having all that information on one profile really does us no good and I still don’t understand the reasoning behind it other than trying to force social networking down our throats, something most of us do not want.

That being said I do feel I have to thank you. This is not an easy job your doing Melissa and while some of us, myself included, get rather frustrated its important to remember its not your fault with whats happening. This does not fix all of our problems by a long shot and I think you guys have alot of work to do catching up to the greatness of the old Yahoo profiles by giving us the functionality we want, let alone advancing further. Its hard for us to go on without knowing whats happening or if we should just leave Yahoo… but I do thank you because it seems at least to a point people are listening. Alot of mistakes have been made and its wrong to blame you as your not the designer but in the end while more updates would be nice its also nice to see progress made.

October 31st, 2008 at 9:07 pm

How about an online status within the profiles? On a few of my accounts, i get this message -Your profile was deactivated by an administrator. I’ve emailed yahoo about it, they have yet to get back with me.

October 31st, 2008 at 10:01 pm

When can we expect a blog for the new profile? 360 is next to useless now, and this new profile isn’t very “social” so far. It’s like Mash Lite, but it’s less filling and doesn’t taste great.

October 31st, 2008 at 10:22 pm

I still don’t really like this new profile to be honest. I have a hotmail account as well and I’m tempted to start using that one a lot more than Yahoo. I’m not saying that this new profile system is bad; however, it’s not good neither, but I am saying that it was a bad idea. Mainly because a lot of users had put a lot of time and effort into not only their main profiles but into their alias’ profiles as well. I liked the old profile page a lot better because it wasn’t as confusing as this one. Not only that but because other people could read about that particular alias if the users were using their alias’ in a chat room or something..

October 31st, 2008 at 10:41 pm

Some improvement in the new profiles, however I can’t see why all of the info we had on our profiles could not have just been placed there for us. Also, as another user has stated, the “member since” area in the old profiles was useful as well as the smiley online/offline indicator. I think if those issues are addressed, as well as the alias issue, this might be ok.
Yahoo really needs to listen to its members as we use this daily and know what we like/don’t like. Obviously few members are happy with the new profiles so it would be wise to reconsider going back to the old ones or allow members the option of selecting their own profile style. 360 was not forced upon us and this new system should not be either.

November 1st, 2008 at 12:51 am

What can I do about my profile that I had no idea of how or why is in Taiwan language?

November 1st, 2008 at 5:04 am

It’s a shame that yahoo has yet again let us down. I checked a number of profiles of friends of mine (and some of my own) and yahoo has not copied the information over and made it public as stated in this blog entry. The only thing that has been done is make the photo, location, and age public. This is all but useless. If I use the http://manage.members.yahoo.com/YOURYAHOOIDORALIAS link there is clearly much missing information from all of these profiles. Not only that, there is clearly much functionality that is still missing from this BETA product,

I want to opt out of this BETA and go back to the live production product. I no longer wish to be a BETA tester, which I never wanted to participate in in the first place.

November 1st, 2008 at 7:01 am

When will Yahoo “update” http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ making the groups worthless, non-accessible, or need re-loading?
Our old Yahoo profiles disappeared without warning…
Will there be a warning this time?

November 1st, 2008 at 7:56 am

Well, this is a bit discouraging.
I just spent at least one hour putting in my profile and when I finished it said it couldn’t be added right now.
So it was all lost!!!!
I should have been housecleaning and I guess I will wait for a while before I try this again.
Perhaps you might want to warn people that this MIGHT NOT WORK BEFORE THEY SPEND A LOT OF TIME ON IT!
GRRR

November 1st, 2008 at 8:34 am

Owners/moderators need to see when a member joined Yahoo with the ID they are using to request membership in a group. If their ID was created the same day they are trying to join my group I email them and ask if they have other Yahoo IDs. I realize they can lie in their response to me but at least it’s something to give me a little information.

If nothing else, at least show the date a profile was last updated.

November 1st, 2008 at 9:18 am

Normally when a product is put on the market it is tested-to make sure it works–sampled by customers to see if they like it, then if the response is favourable, it sold. Does Yahoo know something about marketing that is new and improved???My last question is now that all the clowns are there when does the circus begin?

November 1st, 2008 at 9:47 am

Melissa with the new profiles does that mean the web beacons have been reactivated (I turned mine off)?! I think this is a very important question to those of us who value their Privacy.

Dave

November 1st, 2008 at 11:15 am

Thanks for making those improvements. I have tried again to edit my profiles and this time I could save the edited version. But the last time I got it better somehow I have forgotten cuz that one could not be saved so it’s gone. Yes I think ya’ll are doing the right thing by not rushing into transition of blogs but making all the necessary changes for better and for perfection. Please also ensure convenience.

November 1st, 2008 at 12:02 pm

Melissa,
I have used my Yahoo profile as an easy way to send someone a little information about me for over 8 years!. Suddenly that profile is not there anymore. No picture, no links, no online status, no date of inception. Nothing but a blank smiley face so indicative of Yahoo!
Where is the progress???
Melissa, please tell your developers that any changes have to be better for us not just better for them. I don’t know whose idea this revamp was but they missed the boat.
Perhaps this change will make it easier for Yahoo to rat out dissidents in their quest to aid repressive regimes to keep us all in line..(like they did in Communist Red China)..
Please be responsive to our desires or we might all just up and leave.

Thanks,
Richard

November 1st, 2008 at 12:04 pm

Also it is interesting that you Melissa, are the only one on this discussion whose ‘picture’ shows up for us to see.
(and mine was a good shot too!!!)
Oh well,
Richard (again)

November 1st, 2008 at 12:18 pm

Thank you so much for listening to the problems that people have been having and making it more understandable for them, as well as giving people the opportunity to view other’s profiles, and/or move data.

Your changes have made it much easier for many people.

November 1st, 2008 at 1:50 pm

Will this new profiles have blog? I’ve expected this a lot, but if it doenst have blog, I, and I think lots of others, will leave YM immediately

November 1st, 2008 at 3:28 pm

this new system stinks, better the older one specially for the older people that do not understand the changes,lets just keep it simple for these people,wake up tp yourselves

November 1st, 2008 at 3:31 pm

My 360 profile information was transferred to this new one and all I had to do was go there and activate it. But I have an issue with Alias profiles. Is it better to link them, bind them, or both? I’m not happy with that part as I used those on messenger only. One thing I hate about the new profile is when you leave a comment on a friends page, it all goes on your page as well. Also all the comments on those friends pages goes on yours. Who needs all that anyway, I think it’s retarded. Being quite honest here, I still think the instructions are not very clear as to just what we should be doing. Please respond as I sent a letter to CC and got no response. It’s been over two weeks so I’m sure it won’t be answered. I really need to understand this. Thanks

November 1st, 2008 at 3:44 pm

I STILL cannot link my alias with my profile. I’m not a newbie when it comes to computers, and I can read and follow directions, so when is your product actually going to do what you say it is going to do? And don’t tell me “It’s in the Beta stages.” You should test it first, then; that’s what you DO in a beta stage.

Also, judging from the massive number of negative responses to this change, I would think Yahoo would be interested in pleasing its customer base and not in ruling with an iron fist. I think it’s pretty sad that you not only launched a product without so much as a word of warning that this would happen, but that the “customer service” is poor at best. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned here. As for me, I think I’m going to delete my profile information (I’ve been literally flooded with requests to join groups since this change–it’s worse than spam–thanks for that, Yahoo) and I think I’ll go check out what MSN has going on within their community. This used to be great, but now it’s mediocre at best. The old adage of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” is one you should take back and share with your team–and tell them to take to heart!

November 1st, 2008 at 5:29 pm

Good for a start, but…

“As I have mentioned before, this is the new format for profiles– one main profile for all IDs. If you wish to have multiple profiles for multiple ID’s you need to create separate Yahoo IDs for each.

“I understand your desire for multiple profiles, but we are committed to this new format and the single profile approach.”

The single most recurring complaint has been about the “single profile approach” and the absence of alias profiles. Seems “The Team” has been only half listening.

And I’m sorry, but my Profiles have NOT been “repopulated” — whatever that means. Strangely, a few Aliases, some that I haven’t used for quite some time, display that name and nothing more, aside from that ugly picture place holder. I have no idea what anyone sees when they click one of my aliases.

I’ve been on Yahoo nearly 9 years, and this is the first time I’m genuinely afraid to change anything, for fear of revealing more than I intended.

Take the next step: restore Alias Profiles.

November 1st, 2008 at 6:36 pm

Happy Halloween… Boo!

November 1st, 2008 at 7:16 pm

Thanks for your update, and keep up the good work. I just noticed that links containing I.D.s once again work. I can’t say I’ve seen any of the problems others are experiencing in my own I.D.s’ profiles (and I check them every day to see if any new features have been implemented, or old ones changed).

Happy Halloween!

Regards,
—John

November 1st, 2008 at 8:15 pm

This new profle system just simply doesn’t work.
I have been trying for 3 weeks to make mine work without luck.

It must be something to do with having aliases.
I have had many different names over the years so what is the name
I should use to make my original profile?
I don’t even know how many names I’ve had.

November 1st, 2008 at 8:18 pm

Why on earth did yahoo change the profile system to something
that doesn’t work.
What possible reason could justify that.
Yahoo never said why??????
WHY???

November 1st, 2008 at 9:03 pm

I noticed my profile combined the information from the old profile & what was on my 360 page so my interests sounded like I was repeating myself. I manually fixed that but for those that haven’t gotten around to checking theirs it will be duplicated if they have both areas filled out. I also noticed I can’t view profiles on 2 people on my friends list that get online with mobile, the area for view profile is grey & not clickable to view. Will this be fixed?
Still confused on aliases. The help for not being able to be searched by email says
Click on the “Settings” link located at the top right of your profile and select the “People Search” tab. Uncheck any box that appears in front of any email address(es) you have listed on that page. Hit “Save” to save your settings.
What people search tab? Am I missing something? Are you talking about the “search” tab? are the email addresses you are referring to nothing more than the alias names?

November 1st, 2008 at 11:44 pm

Ok, I’ve practically given up trying to fight for the return of the old profile system, so I’ll play along with this for now and try to contribute my perspective on how the profiles can be improved. For starters, will it be at all possible to increase the character cap on each section of the profiles above 500? For those with a lot to say, or RPers who enjoy crafting detailed profiles, this is kind of a hinderance. Best idea to fix this would be to remove the character cap entirely. Another change I think could be made is allowing more flexibility with the headers for each “section” of the profile, like interests, favorite food, movies, ect. Be it the social butterfly or the roleplayer, I’m certain they may want to share certain information that doesn’t fit those headers. So why not allowthe creation of custom titles/headers, and more to the point, how many there are. Surely ideas such as these are not a long shot by any means, and I think this increase in flexibility in customizing in creating our profiles could keep some members/users from leaving.

One last thing Melissa… I know technically this has been answered before, but why exactly is the team resposible for this so opposed to having profiles for the aliases. I know they have a certain direction they want to head in, but it makes no sense. At this time people are forced to create new IDs for their uses, be it for their on-line gaming on Yahoo!, new IDs to use in chat-rooms and groups to fit what they want seen, and as we’ve been hearing a lot of heat from, the roleplayers are forced to create new IDs for every character or plot that comes to mind. It’s just making things far more complicated than people like. The Team responsible for this and Yahoo! as a whole are in hot water enough as it is for openly refusing to revert to the old profiles, even if it were to be temporary. So perhaps a little compromise is in order… that’s just my opinion though. n.n;;

November 1st, 2008 at 11:59 pm

We don’t want an open Yahoo. We don’t want a Social Yahoo. We come to Yahoo to get away from being open and social. Why on earth would a company with such a unique edge try to give it up in order to be a sub standard clone of its competitors? this is just a bad move.

But how about this Melissa, Why dont you give Yahoo people a place to go.

We need a place that does what Yahoo used to and while many of us are looking I think it would be nice if the Yahoo staff did some looking too and told us where to go since they don’t want us anymore.

November 2nd, 2008 at 12:38 am

Slowly making the switch to gmail. Too bad you can’t find a way to implement your new Y!Facebook knock-off, while allowing the people to keep what they have been asking for.

It’s this callous attitude towards your long time users which has me leaving.

November 2nd, 2008 at 4:03 am

I cant log into yahoo with my main ID now ,, so i lost all my contacts and all of my email ,, like 12 years worth of stufff ,,, thx,,,

November 2nd, 2008 at 7:03 am

WoW! Thanks so much !

November 2nd, 2008 at 12:08 pm

Where can I find actual working directions to joining a group? The new “improved” application seems to have removed the possibility. I think maybe I need an alias, but there is nowhere on the profile page to create one.

For a couple of weeks, customer service has been telling me “Please be assured that we are aware of this problem and are working to fix it. ”

It took a week or two for them to respond with that unhelpful information. So it’s been about a month.

Please send my best to the Customer Frustration Team. Moving all customers to an untested application was brilliant. I’m glad they were not part of the recent layoffs (I have Google stock).

November 2nd, 2008 at 12:53 pm

Thanks Melissa, but there is no “Edit/Create Aliases” link. The word “alias” does not appear anywhere on the page.

November 2nd, 2008 at 12:54 pm

You will notice Melissa did not answer my comment about Yahoo’s use of web beacons & how the new Profile system affects them. Well I have just checked & web Beacons have without my consent been re-actvated under the new profiles system so much for respecting peoples right to privacy & choice. Do a Yahoo seach for web beacons & follow the links to opt out of having your browsing habits watched & tracked by yahpoo.

Dave

November 2nd, 2008 at 2:56 pm

You missed a whole batch of them, mine and most of the people I know. What a giant pain this is. It’s non-trivial to re-populate everything, and then to figure out all the permissions. But that’s OK, it’s become so hard to keep track of each other on Yahoo! that most of us are using other sites now. I only log in every few months now just to see what’s new. I long for the old, simple days….

November 2nd, 2008 at 4:28 pm

I find sharing updates to be redundant information however looking at the list of updates you can share I see that 360 is on there. Are they or are they not getting rid of 360?

November 2nd, 2008 at 8:32 pm

profiles->settings->hide profile…

At least this will keep me anonymous until I’m finished migrating to Google.

November 3rd, 2008 at 3:07 am

I HAVE A BIG GRIPE I’D LIKE TO GET OFF MY LITTLE CHEST. I see all the complaints and disgust with Yahoo but no one NO ONE has said THANK YOU FOR A FREE AND WONDERFUL SERVICE!! Do all these complainers want their money back? I wonder why I had no problem quickly upgrading to my new profile? Also I’d like to make a POSITIVE suggestion to Yahoo; I think you should CHARGE for your service like EVERYONE ELSE. I wouldn’t mind paying a measly $5 or $10 monthly for many hours of pleasure. However I would expect Yahoo to improve some areas like Customer Service inter-exchange-as you have already started. Also more work on eliminating the bots & ads in chat. Keep up the good work & good luck in the future. THANK YOU

November 3rd, 2008 at 8:14 am

What about those of us who can’t even access their profiles? For weeks mine has come up “cannot be retrieved try again”. I don’t care about the alias names…but this is my main yahoo ID and I want to edit my profile! I have been rejected from groups because of this…as some require a current profile.

I have written to yahoo profile help 6 times to no avail, I don’t even get a reply…much less a solution.

HELP!!!

November 3rd, 2008 at 8:39 am

The information in my profile has not been restrored and I have absolutely no interest in signing up for the new profiles. Yahoo keeps bragging about all the new improvements but I haven’t seen anything that has improved.

November 3rd, 2008 at 11:55 am

Why not add a setting to the Settings section, called Chat Nickname and allow the changing of nicknames for all IDs separately? This would actually help a lot with the transition over to these new profiles. Also, I suggest doing a complete step-by-step wizard for any new profiles, allowing people to either import over old information, or start anew with new information.

I believe people want to be able to edit alias IDs separately. It makes more sense that way, to keep people from spying on them. Yes, I know that you can disable a profile for an alias ID, but what if you want to have an ID with more or less information?

I’m a regular in the Yahoo! Chat Help rooms, and I help people out whenever I can. I’ve noted that most of the questions/issues people have are about the new profiles. Either they do not understand how to edit them, or they don’t understand the wording. For example, some don’t understand how to make a profile visible to anyone. The other main issue people have that come into those rooms is, they can’t change their chat nickname. It’s really sad when you have to tell people there’s no way to do one of the things they want.

Might want to think about posting a blog entry EXACTLY going through each step to make a profile visible to everyone, including screenshots. I’d refer people to such a blog post if it were created.

I think the new profiles is a good start, but keep active on them and update them as much as possible. It’s a good thing however that you guys are listening to everyone who posts.

Keep up the good work.

-Michael

November 3rd, 2008 at 1:26 pm

How does one change or delete the information shown when someone hovers their mouse over a user name in the chat room list?
Whatever information was on the old profile shows up and cannot be updated. Filling out the new profiles has no effect on this issue.,

November 3rd, 2008 at 1:38 pm

I am so not shocked that this New profile thingy not only doesn’t work well nor that serves No One ’s needs other than Yahoo, their NEW customers, and The Developers, and Yes I have tried it BUT with a brand spakin’ new dummy account as Not for nothing, only a fool would take the huge leap of faith of trust to set up the new profile until it is explained CLEARLY and has the bugs worked out and in my opinion THAT day will never come! . Yahoo proves over and over again that servering the wants, needs, and concerns of thier LOYAL long time customs Especiallly those still USEING 360 that they could care less what “the people” really want, think or feel.

November 3rd, 2008 at 2:54 pm

Where is the Yahoo members directory? I want to search for people in my area!!

November 3rd, 2008 at 3:51 pm

It would be great to have multiple levels of connections (work, friends, family). I don’t want to share the same content with my friends as my boss and mom.

November 3rd, 2008 at 4:09 pm

This BETA thingy is C-R-A-P!!! All carefully entered details on my profile have disappeared. I can no longer view other profiles so don`t know whether or not the “Ghost” that I am looking at even lives in my COUNTRY…much less my area.

MELISSA!..All your seminar-type lecturing does NOT change the fact that this “IMPROVEMENT” just does not work!

I have even tried, following, religiously, your instructions, to contact members of my own group….only to be told that Yahoo cannot find their profile!!!!!! So what chance, pray, do the rest of us have??

Give us back what we had!! It worked well and took only ONE click!

Manual69er

November 3rd, 2008 at 4:27 pm

Melissa this is just an FYI that may help Trippacker as well as some other people who find that when they try to check a profile on messenger of a person using their mobile phone. It does appear gray and you can not click on it. However when there off line you can then check the profile. It has something to do with the mobile phone. I ran across that same thing so I know.

November 3rd, 2008 at 4:44 pm

i dont like the new profiles. why cant we just see the persons pic when we click on profile?

November 3rd, 2008 at 10:34 pm

My turn

I have just read through all 117 previous comments to this blog entry. I did this to see whether anyone else was encountering the same problems. What I found absolutely astonished me. The entity known as Melissa, a Yahoo! representative whom I presume to be an actual living breathing human being, is actually interacting with users!!!!! Never before in Yahoo!’s history has such a miracle occurred, that I have been a witness to. So thank you Melissa for that, you have provided a thread of hope for us die-hard Yahoo!ers.

I have mixed feeling about the new profiles system. On the one hand it gets rid of the annoying alias BS. I hated not knowing who I was really interacting with. So the new profiles fixes that.

Thank you soooo much!!! :-*

On the other hand, though I did not like it and avoided interacting with alias users, I still respect their choice to do so. Whether they did it out of paranoia, or whatever, aliases allowed personality to show online in a manner that was not so different from real life. None of us are the same towards our bosses, friends, moms, or strangers as are to any one of those.

I personally do not mind any changes that Yahoo! wishes to utilize. I like the ideas, put forth by others in these comments, to include “member since” and “profile updated” dates and online status and “characters/space for each field”, and I’m glad to hear that most of the data from the old profiles are now automatically transfered, that’s all great.

Unfortunately, I cannot even access my profile. When I go to profiles.yahoo.com, I am not presented with the invitation to set up the new profile card, nor do I see my new profile. Instead, I only see an error message which reads, “Sorry, this profile cannot be retrieved at the moment. Please try again”, when I’m logged in and when I’m not logged in, I go to profiles.yahoo.com/waldowoc I get an error that reads, “”We’ve launched a new profile on Yahoo!” and “The user you are searching for either does not exist, or has chosen to keep their profile private”.

Do you have a solution to that Melissa? Keep in mind that while on the pages, the “My Profile”, “Contacts”, “Updates”, and “Settings” links do not take me anywhere different and the “try again” link just takes me to the last page in my browsers history.

If you would help, I would greatly appreciate it.

And now for the nitty-gritty:

I would like to comment on, what I perceive as, a gross misunderstanding of certain English terms and ideals which underline the preceding responses to this blog entry. To start with, Yahoo! uses the term “open social”, which is just a fancy way of saying socialist. The primary principle to socialism is the total eradication of individualism. Therefore, in order to achieve a “more open and social Yahoo!” it must do away with those aspects which focus on the users as individuals, like the old profile system that let the users interact the same way on Yahoo!, as they do in real life.

When I joined Yahoo! back in December of 1998, I did so because Yahoo! openly opposed such socialist giants as Microsoft, and America Online. Back then Yahoo! was proud to be American and unashamed to stand tall on the principles of individualism and liberty. One of the ways Yahoo! did this was through the alias system, users could give as much or as little information as they felt comfortable with, and do so in various settings, just as we as individuals do in the real world.

That, I think is the fundamental reason the new profiles system is so unwelcome by many. It contradicts the vary nature of what it means to be human. As of now, it’s not nearly as personal, or individual. Instead of interacting they way we do in person, through aliases, now we are told by Yahoo! that it wants us to socialize in a matter that it dictates to us, the way it’s competitors always have.

The reason for this new direction can be traced quite easily through Yahoo! history. Though Yahoo! has always been trying and implementing new ideas and features, I can point out some serious mistakes that may have directly contributed to this new socialist Yahoo!. The age discriminating decision, for instance, to bar people from chat-rooms because of age, can be directly tied to the popularity of Yahoo!’s modern competitors, such as MySpace. The growth and popularity of such competitors can, in turn, attract even more of Yahoo!’s base users.

Now, Yahoo!’s powers-that-be look at these competitors with large user bases and instead of asking why Yahoo!’s user base left, they ask, “what do they have, that we do not”. The point Yahoo! is missing is the accountability aspect. If they accepted responsibility for their mistakes, they would realize that their user base left because they felt betrayed, not because of what MySpace has that Yahoo! doesn’t (which is nothing but a socialist attitude). Then they would realize that the only thing a “more open and social Yahoo!” is going to bring is a greater loss of users.

So, maybe that’s what they want.

November 4th, 2008 at 6:57 am

Well, One alias down and deleted, 3 more to go, if the pages/servers ever work. A shame that a service I’ve enjoyed for most of the last 10 years will no longer suit my purposes.

November 4th, 2008 at 10:44 am

Still can’t access my profile. I finally got a response from Yahoo that it was a beta problem and that they are aware of it. Thats it….no solution.
So…how much longer do I have to go without a profile?

November 4th, 2008 at 1:01 pm

OMG!! and WTF!?!?! I post a comment stating I have capitulated to Yahoo for the New profile experience, (what a joke), the fact that most of my Personality data is missing, only a very very small portion made the transition, then I get an email from Melissa asking what I was missing, I answered her, stating what was lacking.

Today I check my profile, and OH by the way, no answering response from Melissa in regards to my email. SO I check my profile, and the few things I had actually showing were GONE!!! When I clicked the My Profile Personal information was there,. PERSONAL information I had not entered on my profile and I DID NOT want out there for public consumption. What the Hell??

I am so totally LIVID!! If I had wanted my PERSONAL Info there I would have put it there, It asks for a last name I typed X in there on purpose. How dare you change it! I choose who and when I give out my information, NOT YAHELL.. or anyone else!

PUT IT BACK!! PUT IT BACK!! I asked for missing data. not for you to rape what was left from my original profile!!!

November 4th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

AND,, what the hell does this mean ‘Allow my connections to share my information labeled “My Connections” with third-party applications they install and developers who made the application” ??? I cleared that box but it looks like its still there.. I dont want anyone to share my information.. or anything.. the answer is NO and NO and NO!!

November 4th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

Melissa,

Below you will find the email I sent to you in response to the very FIRST email you sent me. the Question I have is that Before the email you sent me, and the one I sent you,, my profile had partial information from my ORIGINAL PREFERRED PROFILE. now it has NOTHING from that profile. THIS sux rotten Eggs

Hello Melissa,

I appreciate you taking the time to contact me. The main profile information I am concerned about is the profile I had created for this ID, RavenXXX (this is edited from the original email response).

I have a couple of other IDs I created for a fan based community for an Author we all loved. We had created characters, personalitys, business’, ect and set them in her world. I have not even attempted to retrieve or recreate the profiles I had for that. I don’t plan to. I had put a lot of work into those PRG characters, and I do not have the heart nor the desire to do it again. I will have to find another avenue for that. I am sure we all will.

However, I have too many friends on Yahoo, so unfortunately I can not just drop it. So I have to work within the confines of this New profile format. Which I still hate. I hate it with a passion. I do not want to have connections, I don’t want to blog. I never liked 360, never used it, never had any plans to, I don’t have face book, my space, or any of the others. Never really planned to. It does not appeal to me, never has.

You used the phrase New profile experience several times in all the blogs, and I have read a great majority of them. The prevalent opinion is extremely negative. And that is just from those of us who just had to say something, for every one negative comment you see, I am positive you can quadruple that count for those who have not really said anything. I stumbled on the comment section by accident, I was so intensely angered over this change I had to say something. I am not sure you or anyone else over there has a clue to how truly mad I was, have been, and still am over this.

Like I said before, I am glad y’all are so committed to this new profile format, I am not. I truly dislike being forced into something. And this was forced. You all can pretty it up as much as you want, but its forced all the same. And most people do not like bully’s. And we all know how bullys end up.

Yall need to stop making such radical unneeded, unwanted changes and fix the crap thats wrong. IE, the chat room fiasco. I mean really, why didn’t they fix that first? Right now, the whole sign in thing is a total joke and totally useless. Seriously!

And yes I know you are not the one who made the changes, or the decisions, but you get to try and do damage control. Personally, I think its a losing battle.

Raven

November 4th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

I did,, twice,. and the ony ID I want you or anyone there at Yahell monkeying with is this one. The one I am in such a rant over. And yes I know I am ranting but, Seriously!, I had my old profile just the way I wanted it.. I have separate emails, and I have an RPG (or I did have) that was Totally and completely separate from this ID and email. they are not connected. they are not an alias. so what was on one should not ever show up on another.

That is if I understand this whole NPE correctly.

November 4th, 2008 at 2:22 pm

I absolutely HATE this new profile stuff. You say some of this stuff is ‘working’ but it is NOT. You are trying so hard to be like myspace, facebook just like msn with it’s LIVE thing rather than just being YOURself. A lot of things that ‘you’ guys think is working isn’t. It’s frustrating to ‘click’ a link to one of your alias and not be able to navigate to it. And what makes it worse is trying to get the powers that be to understand what they ‘think’ is working isn’t or that we understand what we are doing…yahoo just isn’t what it’s reputed to be.

Very tired of this, very.
beta jenn

November 4th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

…I should ad that a lot of yahoo users would like to decide which version of profiles they have to use. Many of us did not and still do NOT like your ‘I wanna be like OE & msn’ email account. Thankfully we were ‘allowed to choose to revert to the old version.

It’s kinda like the real world. Debit cards are great and most like them much better BUT if I want to write an old fashion check for my purchase I should be able to do so. Thank GOD yahoo isn’t over that also.

And please, please, please do not email me with one of your very famous canned responses. They are about as great as cold grits on the day we have an ice storm.

November 4th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

I just got spammed.

I tried to report it off the linked profile. Instead of a string to verify I got an error message: “We’re sorry, but no image is available at this time. Please try again later.”

The reason I know it was spam? My location is phrased oddly and automerged into the spammer’s spiel…
++++
hot damn Alex u look fine! i luved ur profile, i will visit Southeast Queensland Toowoomba & Brisban this weekend, wanna go out? i got some pics at: http://Jeannette23n.tk, i even got videos, hit me up and get my number from http://Jeannette23n.tk , for real hit me up on http://Jeannette23n.tk on screen name tightp! p.s. im online for couple more hours! ttcnehgb

To view AllieR’s profile, click here: http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/CGSWNVNAAUYH5DU42IPZ3ZAOIU
++++

November 4th, 2008 at 2:37 pm

How do I change/upload a photo on a Mac? The [Change photo] link on my profile doesn’t work.

November 4th, 2008 at 3:00 pm

WHAT???? The member search DOES NOT work!! The one thing I use the most, to find out about some one before I appraoch them for a chat or meeting…If Yahoo can’t fix this, it is useless to me.

November 4th, 2008 at 4:23 pm

Melissa we have proven over and over again that we do not want what Yahoo is giving us now. We do not find it acceptable nor right that yahoo has done this to its loyal fan base and quite frankly most of us have given up on Yahoo and left. So I think its only right if you help the rest of us leave so that Yahoo can go back to having its precious single profile facebook ripoff format and we can all go our separate ways. I think its only right, considering how most of us have stuck with yahoo though thick and thin for many years. We can’t find anotehr IM client that is suitable and funcitons the way Yahoo used to, so its only acceptable that someone at Yahoo put in the leg work and tell us where we can go since we are not welcomed here.

Please, don’t try to tell us we are. Yahoo has taken away everything we want from the profile system, has put on oppressive and frightening features that leave our identities vulnerable to theft or worse, and has overall rendered the system unusable. That sends a clear message that we are not welcomed anymore. I’m fine with that, as are we all at this point. however if you are going to shun so many users the least Yahoo! could do as a parting gesture is tell us a few places that WILL accept us. Its the least your company can do.

November 4th, 2008 at 7:58 pm

Are you guys working on getting the yahoo smiley face online/offline status back?

November 4th, 2008 at 10:34 pm

Hello,
Group Moderators are reporting an issue with new profile format- Verifying age of pending group members is now quite a hassle.
With the new profile format, there now seems to be a problem pertaining to viewing the age of pending members to groups.
With the original profiles format, for the benefit of the moderator, the applicants’ age, if displayed on their profile, was automatically displayed on the “pending members” list, as well as on the “current members” list. With the new profile format, this no longer happens. Since their age does not appear on these lists, the moderator must now navigate to each and every profile just to ascertain the person’s age. For busy groups, this can be very time consuming. I have been searching for a solution, but up to now, have not been successful in resolving the issue.
Dave

November 4th, 2008 at 11:52 pm

Is there a reason why my Yahoo ID “Asiiniseth” has no profile at all whatsoever? I haven’t been able to get it to come up.

November 5th, 2008 at 4:57 am

I have another question for you Melissa. This is one that I’m sure is more heavily relavent to the roleplaying community on Yahoo!, but I’m sure it can be applied just as well to those for whom privacy is a strong concern. Once we create the profile that will represent our ID, is it truly required to keep our names on it? I myself have, with non-roleplaying IDs, have simply replaced the fields with my first and last name to “N/A” as a means of keeping my identity secure. And I’m fairly certain that you said before in some post under another blog section that roleplayers can replace the “names” on the profiles with whatever they wish. I’m just trying to make sure my understanding on all this is correct, and it’ll give other users some reassurance it they are not forced to keep their names on their profiles for fear of identity theft or what have you.

November 5th, 2008 at 6:43 am

What a joke . My old photo is not in my profile , tried clicking on “change Photo” and that does not work either . Has anyone out there had any luck in adding a new photo to their profiles or even putting the old photo back on . This is very very bad and very poor customer relations for the yahoo site and who ever calls the shots in this yahoo department . Frustrating and very laughable situation here. Try and fix the problem or fire the ones in charge and hire new experts . Thanks, Tony

November 5th, 2008 at 7:26 am

Instead of changing it back would it be easier to give the member an options to customize the profile more then the way you have it now. like add colors,and other stuff kinda like Yahoo! 360.

Keep going Yahoo!

November 5th, 2008 at 11:57 am

Hey Melissa,

I have an issue with linking, not alias linking, just web linking in general, I can’t get my myspace page, or hotornot page, or anything to be displayed as a link, they’re just grey and not clickable, can you mail me and tell me how to fix it? I emailed you at yprofilesblog at yahoo dot com and it was sent back (yes, I changed at and dot), so please email me and let me know how to fix this!!!

November 5th, 2008 at 12:14 pm

Ok how about this one. If yahoo really hates its users enough to not go back to the old profile format, can they at least check on all of these spam groups and try to get rid of them? its frustrating trying to deal with constant spam emails like this.

November 5th, 2008 at 12:53 pm

Actually, the new profile is not bad. It still needs some glitter, but I prefer it to having nothing.

I do miss the amount of space that we had to write in before, perhaps that can be fixed. It would be nice to have the online status smiley back, next to changeable status moods or free form text and the ability to make the profile a bit more colorful would help too.

My question is this, Yahoo! has MyYahoo! with sort of the same setup..so why not just combine all of the products, such as email, messenger, profile and 360 into one…the base being MyYahoo!?

Just a thought…

November 5th, 2008 at 1:13 pm

Hi Pour the change of the profile, there has difficulty has to make him(it) especially when we speak not about English, but has the end of the finiton his(her,its) very so, more beautiful, complete.
If possible to help French people to have a possibility of the credit note in French also.
thank you

November 5th, 2008 at 7:37 pm

I’ve been trying to read through this entire thread, there’s too much in here. Somewhere it said something about getting the data elements from my yahoo profile back when i connect in to the new and *hardly* improved profile… that didn’t happen. So… for an idiot user such as myself, how would I go about getting that profile information back?
I don’t have alias.. just the one profile…. not one of those lurkers in yahoo land that feel the need for multiple identies

November 5th, 2008 at 7:43 pm

I have two profiles that I can’t edit due to this message=Your profile was deactivated by an administrator.
I have emailed the yahoo team about this, which was two weeks ago, i have yet to hear back from them, still.

November 5th, 2008 at 8:49 pm

Profiles still blank, alias still have no value since they no longer stand on their own.
This doesn’t make Yahoo more open and social, it makes Yahoo violate their users privacy by exposing them unnecessarily.
I am finding groups substitutes, runboard.com is a good one, windows live is about to open a new style of groups, MSN groups is moving over to Multiply so there’s an option there as well. If anyone else knows of good secure replacements for Yahoo please share!
Thanks!
-HJR

November 5th, 2008 at 11:53 pm

Well I come back to yahoo after a good long break to check in with freinds and walk right into this fiasco. Well I don;t like it, I don;t like it one bit. From what I’ve heard from the few people I could get in contact with this “change” has all but put the nail in the coffin for most of the people I knew on yahoo.

I used the old alias profiles to control what info different people could see depending upon our releationship. Well that’s gone now! Along with it any reason I have to even use anything branded Yahoo! other than messenger and that may end depending on what my friends decide.

Yahoo people listen close. If I wanted to use my space or facebook I would of never came back to yahoo at all. But do to your less than stellar reasoning and forced implementaion of this new profile system(still in beta and forced on everyone? That is the worst kicker) you will most likely lose my patronage very quickly unless I see the functionality I use to get which doesn’t look to promissing.

Yahoo the ball is in your court…………………

November 6th, 2008 at 4:40 am

I started yesterday, just trying to join a Freecycle group, that’s all. So I click join, and am taken to a page saying I must provide a profile name before I can use groups. Fine I thought, so I enter various aliases that are all taken, so I finally decide to go with one suggested by Yahoo! Finally I’m taken away from this page. i’m making progress… or am I? Nope, I’m now on a page which bizarrely says ‘oops, there’s nothing here, go back to profile page’. Erm.

So I start again, and again. I came back later in case there was some ‘bug’ that needed ironing out and might be sorted by the time I came back. Nope. It’s still happeneing, I’m getting sick of having to do it all over again and get the same error message which leads me to square one… Melissa, it’s groundhog day!

If anyone can tell me how to sort this I’d be most grateful.

November 6th, 2008 at 4:54 am

Incidentally, a friend has just told me they posted a message in one of their groups and noticed that their full name is now on display for all the world to see!!! It wasn’t before, and this is causing them to not post messages until it’s sorted out, for their own safety and security, and they want to know how to change that. This appears to be a MAJOR security issue and I can see a lot of people migrating from Yahoo if not addressed and put right, fast.

I would suggest Yahoo introduce the option to opt-in/opt-out for this BETA, allowing those people who would be more comfortable to adjust their profiles in the old format, and to CHOOSE if they want to try this new system out.

November 6th, 2008 at 7:20 am

Did member search disappear? I have tried to search for a member, but all I get is my profile….

November 6th, 2008 at 7:43 am

Would it be possible to remove the ’send a message’ or ‘invite to connect’ from the main profile page? It would be nice to see these two items as options when you edit the ‘basics’ section of your profile by being able to select if you would like to receive messages or invites. In the last couple of weeks my email has been overloaded with both messages & invites from people I do not know, and do not wish to know (some of them pretty creepy!)

November 6th, 2008 at 12:47 pm

When are you scapping this and going back to what we had before?

November 7th, 2008 at 1:07 pm

It seems Yahoo wants to make money out of everybody by setting our profile to what they now call “Public”. If anybody wants to add any “Private” features, they will now have to “subscribe” for it. I think all they are trying to do is gain profit from their broken website. Think about it, They have not even fixed their chat-room which is filled with bots, but they want us to pay for that feature or “Subscribe” to it. They even have the time to go through each account and shut some services off, but they dont have the time to fix their bot issue. im tired of this website. Stay if you want, but i am leaving this place.

November 8th, 2008 at 9:22 am

so now in order for me to view all my contacts profiles… id have to request them to add me to a kind of “profile view list” and have to log in to view the profile?

November 9th, 2008 at 7:45 am

This stinks on ice.

On the Welcome to Your New Profile page it says “Control who sees what” — not exactly true, since any who click an Alias SEE THE MAIN ID! We have no control over THAT. What good is the Edit/Create Aliases link? The only choice given is Delete! Deletion is not the same as editing.

I really hate this no alias profiles nonsense. Three weeks of more than 2600 overwhelmingly NEGATIVE reactions on this blog placebo shows I’m far from alone. Yahoo has taken away one feature after another and now the only thing that worked half-way decently has been changed for the worse.

Now comes what can be considered the “official” word: “…we will not be returning to the old version of profiles.” Well guess what? Many users will not be returning, either.

November 11th, 2008 at 2:19 am

What a shambles – ineptitude and arrogance in equal measures on a gargantuan scale. In future years I’m sure how this debacle has been handled will make for a good case study. I can hear Jakob Nielsen sharpening his pencil even as I type. You people have wiped out all the information that was on my profile, it now has nothing except my user name. And using Groups where you want to find out about someone via their profile has become a complete waste of time. I suspect that will be next for ‘improvement’ and will result in more useless tinkering resulting in people no longer using them.

Just to chime in on the overwhelming chorus of what users actually want – the old service. Not interested in this ‘new and improved’ service no matter how much spin is put on to it via this horribly patronising corporate-speak attempt at user feedback. Yuk.

‘NEW AND IMPROVED’ – DO NOT WANT!

November 11th, 2008 at 5:52 am

Does anyone find the new yahoo profiles to be of little use to list owners? I filled out mine again and all it shows to a person searching profiles is, that I’m a female, my age and where I live. They took out the “favorite links” (which was a REALLY NICE FEATURE) and showing the other information like interests etc. I haven’t searched preferences to see if I can SHOW this to everyone but surely most folks who are more technology- challenged will NOT find this option.

As far as the “friends” concept, can the good folks at yahoo understand that:

1. Many of us are NOT interested in – yet another – clone of Myspace or facebook, and
2. that is of NO use to list owners where the old profiles used to be a great tool for discerning a person’s eligibility for membership in an email list and also in trying to understand their actions in the group i.e. apparently generally speaking, only “friends” of the person are privy to “interests and other” information.
3. a person could get around the profile to provide MORE information by using the favorite links which were available to everyone who looked.

To determine list eligibility, I need to know a lot more info than just a person’s age. And now, of course, the profiles are even more difficult to fill out than before so less folks are using them.

I know the yahoo folks do read this and are somewhat sensitive to comments and critiques so thus the reasoning for my message here. I truly hope you consider making the new profiles “myspace clone” an OPTION for those who want it but consider retaining the old profiles for those who want them also and too, I hope you reconsider re-adding the favorite links feature to be available for all to see because that was very useful to list owners.

thanks for reading this and for BEING sensitive to the needs of yahoo users,
Best,
SueW (owner of 14 yahoo lists)

November 11th, 2008 at 2:06 pm

November 11th, 2008 at 1:52 pm

My profile has been “unsearchable” and “cannot be retrieved” for weeks. I have sent 6 emails via the profiles help pages. Half got an autoresponse promising a reply soon, Nothing. others got no response at all. The last one sent 9 Nov was returned as undeliverable. So now even the email help is broken. I don;t really anticipate an answer here either, We’ll see.

Frank H.

November 13th, 2008 at 8:08 am

Did it ever occur to the powers-that-be at Yahoo that perhaps the users preferred the level of anonymity provided by the old profile system? If I wanted a clone of Facebook, I would have joined Facebook. If I wanted all my life details on my profile, I would have added them and made it searchable. Whoever made the decision to force all members into the cookie-cutter needs to be fired.

November 13th, 2008 at 10:53 am

I’ve had a Yahoo account for more than 10 years, and my profile when I am logged in as myself is not even blank, it says,

“We’ve launched a new profile on Yahoo!. Your profile is currently marked as unsearchable. If you want to make your profile searchable, please update your search settings.”

Update my “search settings”? What kind of gibberish is this? I didn’t change anything. Yahoo changed things. I don’t see the challenge with converting a bit of meta-data to a new format? I’ve used Yahoo services less and less as my email account has become burdened with nothing but spam, and as my personalized services became less and less useful.

I administer a Yahoo group as well, and one thing I counted on was being able to check how long a prospective group member has been on Yahoo. Now this information is no where to be found!

This new profile is NOT a step in the right direction!

November 13th, 2008 at 11:05 am

A few months ago Netflix moved to make a “enhancement” — fortunately pre-announced — to how their profiles worked. After an equally loud and disastrous response by the user community, they relented and retained the feature. Will Yahoo learn from Netflix’ experience, or blunder on blindly, ignoring their customers?

November 13th, 2008 at 7:08 pm

I dont want a profile shown at all
I do not want people sticking their damned noses in my business.
If I want people to know something about my frigging Email address , my life , or my current activities then I will tell them.

I want a way to remove the thing period.

November 14th, 2008 at 8:21 pm

I rarely check in on my profile but I followed a link to it from the one group I’m in. And it’s blank! Which probably explains why all the other profiles I’ve looked at from the group are blank. I don’t know what you think you did to keep stuff intact, but it doesn’t appear that it worked. I had a nice but simple profile that let people like other group members see who I am. I doubt many people looked at it, and it was adequate for those that did. That is ALL I WANT from Yahoo. I don’t need yet another social network site or community. I’m not going to bother rebuilding a profile, and it appears many others have not bothered either. You didn’t do anyone, including yourselves, any favors with this change and the loss of profile info that came with it. In your effort to compete with Facebook and MySpace and such you’re only going to lose the use people were making of your site before.

November 16th, 2008 at 1:53 pm

How do you search for other yahoo messenger users? The old yahoo advanced search page had ways to search for users that were online, by sex, by location, by interest etc. Of course it very seldom worked which was typical of yahoo.

November 16th, 2008 at 8:01 pm

I truly think the date you originally created your profiles should be added back. We have many groups and at times we are forced to remove or ban members for various activities. Since the changes we now have tons of people requesting to join the groups and without this knowledge we are not sure if their accounts were newly created or long standing ones. People that have been removed or banned will now simply create a new account and re-apply to your group and we have no idea now if they are new people wanting to join or the ones that created trouble on our groups. Please PLEASE consider adding this back to our profiles. We are trying to run great groups and keep potential trouble in them, but this is now making it impossible for us. Thank you for considering this.

November 18th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

My issue is with the language of profiles; it used to be that when you clicked on a profile you were taken to a profile page that was in the language the individual concerned signed up in. Now everything is in english (I assume if you sign in on a english yahoo site). This doesnt help me ; I play dominoes and enjoy greeting my opponent in the language their langauge (I speak 6 languages so that covers a good majority of players lol) now there is no way of knowing what language to address people in sheesh so much for progress…

November 19th, 2008 at 11:29 pm

every time I try to view my OWN profile, and yes I’m signed in… it either says “there’s nothing here to see go to your profile”, or “Sorry, this profile cannot be retrieved at the moment. Please try again.” I can’t open my settings either cuz it tells me the same thing. I’ve tried every way possible to get into my profile and it won’t let me. Please tell me how to fix this I’m at my wits end!!!!!!

November 20th, 2008 at 10:20 pm

I am a group owner that has been having some trouble with the new profile system. I have members that are in pending until this is either fixed or they give up. My group is an age-secure group and we are required to view the member’s age (at least) before approving or denying the applicant. HELP please!!

November 21st, 2008 at 1:06 am

I haven’t read the whole list of commentary. I’m going to speculate the reason why the profiles are all in one account so that Yahoo can regain control over the spammers who use countless anonymous alias to flood the chat rooms and clog the emails.

It’s an obvious drain on yahoo’s servers and black eye to their reputation as breeding ground for spammers.

I’m just confused why they don’t just limit the amount of alias per account. I can’t imagine someone using more than 3 different alias. If you need more then register another email.

I think the 360 profile/blogs, whatever you want to classify them are total failure. Far too cluttered and and not worth maintaining.