Profiles Updates: Member Since and Flickr Integration
We’re happy to announce that the profiles team has been hard at work and has pushed out a new release, which includes a few great features many of you have been asking for. Though much of this release includes a lot of “backend” functionality that you all won’t see the release did include: Flickr integration and the return of “Member Since.”
Flickr Integration: A little more than two weeks ago we asked you what third party sites you’d like to see integrated into profiles, and one of the most common responses was Flickr integration. Today, we’re happy to announce that Flickr is alive and kicking in Profiles, and can be accessed by going to Updates> Manage My Updates, and Flickr should appear in the list of available updates.
Display Name: You might notice that your Display Name now appears in your profile-we’ve added it in, in parentheses beneath your “Real Name” and before your location. For people who aren’t connections, this is what will display in place of your “Real Name” in your contact card, and for people who are your connections, this information will appear in a parentheses beneath your “Real Name.”
Member Since: Also included in this release is the “Member Since” feature, back by popular demand. This feature, now visible in the lower right-hand corner of a contact card, allows you to see when a user first created their profile.
Profile Cards: While you navigate your way through profiles on Yahoo!, you may come across a few different types of contact cards for users. Below is a quick walk-through of some of the options.
Of course, its also important to note that if a user has set their profile (and its content) to be viewable by anyone, all of its content is public.
However, if a user has opted to do the opposite, and wants to make their profile unsearchable, you’ll see a screen like this:
If a user has not activated their profile, but has previously filled out their primary profile information (either on the old profiles site or on 360, etc.) you will see a contact card similar to this–note the fact that some of the information is filled out, and the user may or may not have a profile image, but the distinguishing factor is that the user’s nickname appears instead of their full name.
And finally, if you’ve come across a user’s alias account and the user has not activated their profile, you may see an empty contact card altogether, much like this.
Please feel free to share any feedback you might have about the new release (and any of the changes I didn’t highlight, including a change to the look and feel of connection suggestions– (the box is now yellow instead of white, and that the suggestions are a bit more targeted)), by leaving a comment below. Thanks!
Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager
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- 89 Comments
March 5th, 2009 at 10:56 am
I like what you have done and look forward to seeing more.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Than ks for the “update”
Do you think i’ll be able to add a Wordpress weblog later on or a feed of my choice like on MyBlogLog. BTW, a few week ago I noted that tumblr does not work when you choose to set up a custom domain for your tumblog. In my case I had to deactivate the custom domain, setup the feed on Y!Profile and then reactivate the Custom domain. Maybe a note to the user would be good
March 5th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Hi GuillaumeB,
Good catch on Tumblr– I’ll pass your feedback on and see if we can’t find a resolution to the problem– seems silly to have to go through that many steps to get things set up.
Right now, if you have your blog set up through MyBlogLog (as a feed into MBL) and you have MBL set up to feed into your profile, you should see all of your activity show up in your updates stream. Sneaky, huh?
As far as WordPress goes, yep, we’re definitely looking into adding it. Thanks!
-Melissa
March 5th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
It is good,
waiting for the next addition to updates and other such things.
I do wonder, if you guys would allow users, when they have an invitation to connect to be able to send messages to each other through profiles.
I get connection invites from people i don’t know and when i go to their profile it may be vacant, which is fine, i understand the security, but it would be good if I could communicate with them. Sending messages through profiles doesn’t share emails or break privacy but it is a way for a person to ask questions and discuss with another person whom they don’t know about connecting
March 5th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
MK,
Ah, the irony is that this feature WAS there when we launched and so many users were angry about it we removed it. A lot of users abused/exploited this feature and used it to send spammy messages to people they didn’t know, so it was pulled from the site.
I’ll bring it up to the team but I have a feeling they’ll say “we tried that!”
But either way, I’ll be sure to pass it on.
-Melissa
March 5th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Ah, but could you make it so that only the recipient of the invitation to connect can enable messages to that inviter? Then someone like MK could make his inquiry and get an answer. If he didn’t like what he heard he could turn that inviter off again.
The only down side I can think of, and it might be enough to nix the feature, is that it might encourage spammers to spew invites hoping for the invitee to initiate communication.
But at least they wouldn’t be able to put the spammy message there from the get-go.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:43 am
I have a solution. Let the invitee have the ability to send one message and receive one reply. Like a security handshake.
It goes back to etiquette. If I am trying to connect with you. It is obvious I want it to happen, but you may not, so you should have the right to send one message to me with any questions and I have the right to send one message back.
Make it a one time deal.
what do you think of that shal? Melissa?
March 6th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
even simpler, only let the user communicates with his trusted contacts by autocompleting the to:line only from the adressbook
March 7th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
but what if a spammer adds to the address book of their pseudo user , can they then autocomplete from their guillaume?
March 7th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I was thinking about a pure “Trusted Connection address book” (once again separated from the Y!Mail address Book) because the point of trusted connection is to build strong relation then there is no way i’m gonna let just anyone in my connection. Therefore if I did not add a spammer, he:she wont be able to talk to me.
That’s why Yahoo! could simply autocomplete the to:line with people from the trusted Connection address book” . BTW that’s what Facebook and Twitter do
March 8th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Alright, that is a good idea. Why can’t we add the service into address book. Allows a user on profiles to develop a trusted connection. Maybe through some sort of test through emails.
A trusted connection should be able to be emailed some sort of test to prove they are trustworthy at the behest of a user and then, be added to this special category in the address book.
Essentially make rules for certain categories.
I think yahoo should implement that. We can not ask yahoo to make a wedge between profiles and yahoo mail address book at this point.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:46 am
Melissa , I have a more concise version of what might work below Shal’s comment.. Maybe if you present that streamlined and focused version to them it can be implemented.
In this version only the receiver of the invitation , not the sender of the invitation has the power to initiate a conversation and it is only to send one email and receive one back.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Hi there,
I’m Harold, an engineer on Yahoo! Profiles, and I’ve especially enjoyed reading this thread. We know that the experience of receiving a connection invite is something that we haven’t quite gotten right. Specifically, identifying the person who invited you is too difficult. We’ve had debates and arguments about it here, and this thread’s making me feel like I’m still in that conference room! You guys have hit the nail on the head. It’s going to be very hard to get this right, and we’ve certainly erred on the side of privacy and anti-spam behavior. Shal and MK, please be assured that there are voices here who are hoping to allow what you’re asking for, but we need to make sure we don’t overstep a boundary of trust with our users.
Of course, we can’t promise that we’ll change things in a certain way or give a timeline for changes. However, whether or not we actually implement this type of messaging, look for the experience when you’ve been invited to improve.
Thanks for the feedback – and in my case, a flashback!
You guys rock.
-Harold
Front-End Engineer, Yahoo! Profiles
March 7th, 2009 at 1:48 am
thank you harold:)
I have been a yahoo customer for most of my online existence primarily and i have to say i have enjoyed more communication in this blog, than any other venue for yahoo and it is encouraging.
Thanks for keeping it on the table and going toward efficiency.
will wait for the next step
March 9th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Harold, as I asked before (but it seems it was eaten or denied) Could you please inform us, from an engineering standpoint, why it is that your team is not giving us back our proper Alias profiles? I have asked about them many times and rallied for them as an important reason for why many of us enjoyed Yahoo in the past. In fact the fact that it is gone is one of hte main reasons a large number of your users have left. We know so far that the team for some odd reason is deciding not to give us back our ability to have Aliases, but thus far there is no clear reason as to why other than it ‘does not fit’ with your plans. I have yet to see anything proposed that would not benefit from Alias Profiles, and in fact things like the search function almost require them for the sake of safety and anonymity which are both very important on the internet.
I ask you, please, to strongly consider bringing the Alias profile back for the good of Yahoo, or if not to at the very least explain to us what part of the profile system requires an absence of the Alias system. It can only do your company good to put it back.
-Terra
March 12th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Terra,
Asking Harold isn’t going to change things. It’s not just an engineering decision to eliminate aliases– it’s a policy decision across Yahoo!. When you read through the open social strategy you’ll see that the underlying strategy is to create a clear line between you, the user, and your content across Yahoo!. Having separate profiles for each of your aliases does not accomplish this. It creates separate silos for your data, identity, and information across the network as opposed to one clean, streamlined approach.
I’ve also mentioned to you several times that should you want to keep your profiles completely separate you can delete your aliases and create all new y! ID’s with those same aliases (I’d do them one at a time if I were you).
Just because you don’t like the answer I give you doesn’t mean it’s the wrong answer or that another Yahoo is going to give you a different one. We have considered your perspective, and the perspective of millions of other users, and have made a decision. Sorry you don’t agree with it.
-Melissa
March 12th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
From your explanation Melissa, it sounds to me like it actually is purely an engineering issue.
What’s the difference between allowing users to have aliases with different profiles with different data and identity information across the network, and forcing the users to create separate accounts?
Yes, separate accounts, as you suggest, does allow for an “alias” type of experience, but it creates management hassles for the user.
I think you (yahoo decision makers) just don’t want to spend the time required to replace the old alias functionality.
March 13th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Hi Bruiser,
No. Again, it’s a policy decision. As a company we have made a conscious decision to NOT have aliases with full profiles. It’s not that our engineers “just don’t want to spend the time” as you so kindly put it, but it’s a company decision. End of story. End of discussion. There’s nothing more to say about this.
Honestly you guys, I’ve addressed this issue at least a hundred times to the same five or six people (maybe ten) and there’s nothing more to say about it all. Aliases as you knew them are gone. At this time, there are no plans on them returning, and while we understand there are a select few of you who really want them to return, I’m afraid I have to tell you that they’re not.
As I’ve said before, if you want to keep your profiles separate, create a separate ID all together. If you need help doing that, I’d be happy to walk you through the steps, but if not, then I’m sorry, because the form of aliases you all are talking about are not returning at this time, nor are there plans at this time to have them return.
-Melissa
March 16th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Why didn’t you address my point? The fact that the only difference between creating separate logins, and allowing one login with multiple aliases, is an engineering issue? There’s no difference between the two except engineering, and the nag factor for users moving between their multiple accounts.
I didn’t say your engineers don’t want to spend the time, I said that the decision makers don’t want the engineers to spend the time. Big difference there.
It’s the point that users CAN make multiple accounts to simulate aliases, and is even a workaround suggested by an official Yahoo employee (you Melissa) which leads to the conclusion that someone somewhere has decided that they simply don’t want the effort expended to reimplement the old alias functionality.
March 26th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
I see Yahoo is still trying to sell this new profile thing. Give it up, it sucked when you changed it & it still does. This is what happens when you fix something until it’s broken. Nice job!
March 5th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Speaking of the “Yellow section” for contact suggestions. Please do not make that a permanent thing. There is no way Yahoo know’s who we may or may not want as our friends. Just because I have people on my IM does not make them a candidate for my Profile page. That yellow box is an eye sore and distracting. I still don’t know why you decided to take 360 away and make this horrid new profile page. I was trying to accept it and even added a few friends, but if your going to continue to suggest who those people should be. I’m gong to rethink if I plan to use ir or not. You already had the blue section on the left hand side of the page with our contacts. That you made it so we can hide. Which is GREAT. Now please, please do something with that yellow section.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:29 am
no i don’t see your face.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I am fighting with adding my blogger blog to my profile and i can’t make it work. I am using a custom domain. What to do ?
March 6th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Hi,
It feels really good read reactions directly from the team on this blog. it’s too bad the Y!Mail blog was spammed and has to close comments.
Anyway, in one of your previous posts i mentioned the painful invitation process. Now here is the thing. Although i understand the importance of trusted connections in a social context i do believe that this feature should not inherently be linked to my Y!Mail address book.
Sure I like to read my trusted contacts’ updates right from Yahoo! Mail but it does not mean I want those emails highlighted in my inbox. As an example i don’t feel the need to know my bro’s online activity ’cause I know them, but it would be cool to have his email stand out in my inbox.
Referring to Joy’s comment above, the fact that some people are in my messenger does not mean that i want to build a trusted relation with them. Right now, In my address book i have like over 200 contacts. For some it’s not a lot, but basically it means that a large majority of them will forever display a grey icon as their picture just because they’re do not have a Y!profile or because i’m not connected to them. When the new address book will go live i expect a HUGE part of the users that will be angry not to personalize this contact picture themselves and to be forced to connect with everyone in their address book.
I wrote an article about this on my blog and i’m gonna post the example that i used : my boss emails are quite important to me and clearly needs to be highlighted, but guess what, i do not work at Yahoo! and it’s not like i can invite it over to Yahoo! Profile. It’s not like he’s gonna make his avatar either..
So clearly in the future, i hope you guys consider making out the social updates with trusted connection from the address book and highlight messages on the Yahoo Mail front page.
I was initially thinking about stripping the invite mode and taking after the Twitter “follow” process with a slight difference : when i choose to follow a person, he or she can “refuse” it (and not “accept” it)
March 6th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Thanks for fixing the migration issue on older profiles where it pulled in your first name and last name – instead of what your profile display name was.
March 13th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Hi Pete,
Sure thing! We know that this was a feature/facet that many of you wanted and saw as an important part of protecting your identity while online.
Thanks for commenting.
-Melissa
March 7th, 2009 at 9:40 am
It seems to be that we’ve rewinded the clock to January 2008, back when Mash has a module to display Flickr photos.
The “Universal Profile” is out – it has been, for some time – and apart from being singularly uninspiring, there’s nothing much to say about it.
Still no blog.
My own hope is that they make good on their promise to help us transition our blog-material – although by now, I’ve a feeling that anyone who really cares has done so.
Most people have left for Facebook, Multiply, and MySpace if they want a social-component; the serious writers among us left for WordPress; Blogger; other sites — the sad thing (and one which Yahoo never fully realized) is that they had a hybrid product here which appealed to a mass-audience; one which could have done with an overhaul, but which would have served them well, and gotten them market share.
Instead, we have a lackluster product that serves no useful purpose and a CEO that no longer seems to think building a social network is import to Yahoo. So what’s the point of the profile thing then?
March 9th, 2009 at 6:59 am
Totally agree with you Carl. I believe this whole “Open and Social” thing was a mistake, mainly because they missed the bus, and made their changes waaayyy too late. If they had started making these changes before Facebook/MySpace/ had gotten most of the marketshare, then it would have been a smart choice.
March 7th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
So here I am again with a question that has nothing to do with this particular blog topic (but I post it anyways in the hope that Melissa or someone else in power will notice it):
I wrote about this in the 5 things I’d like added/changed etc on the yahoo profiles. It has to do with your connections, and how it would be so much easier if you could just manage them directly on the connections page, instead of having to open contacts and do it all from there.
That said, I have to ask if anyone else have a grey connection named ? ont heir connection page? Because I do and so do a bunch of my friends. An anonymous connection who doesn’t show up on the contacts list and thus can’t be deleted.
Now I am a naturally paranoid person. I always believed that a healthy dose of online paranoia is necessary and sensible, when maneuvering around on the interweb. Which brings me back to the mysterious ? in my contacts. Who is this ? and what is he/she/it doing there?
I’ve got this feeling somebody’s watching me.
March 10th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
In regards to Abbey and the mysterious names on her contacts this may be of help. Most of us have had people on our yahoo messenger that we tired of or just got fed up with and deleted them. Well, that didn’t get rid of them since they didn’t delete you in return. They even see when your online and they never know you deleted them. But getting to your point. Those ppl still show up in your address book somewhere and these names are the ones going on your contact list in gray. And no way do we want those showing up on our profile page to stare at each time we go there. I’d much rather have to pull up the gray list from the left side of the page. Since you can’t get rid of it which do you prefer, you want to look at it all the time or only when you pull it up? I do think this is why there showing up on our list of contacts tho as that is what is happening with mine. I just hope this will help you understand why, it doesn’t fix it.
March 12th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Hi Abbey,
Hmm… sounds like a fluke. Did you file a bug? I’ll see if I can’t have someone look into your account, but it’s likely that it’s some sort of friend-ing error, but don’t quote me on it.
Duly noted on the suggestion about managing your connections from the same page– I totally agree.
I also agree that a “healthy dose of online paranoia” is necessary, and is the best way to keep your info safe. It’s ok to reveal some things, but not too much. BUT, I wouldn’t be too worried about this guy.
Either way, I’ll look into it and see if I can’t get to the bottom of it.
-Melissa
March 7th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
The mysterious ? I am talking about can be found here: http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/MRH7DWBTFI5PWGMTRF2HCCC7WY
To me it looks like ye old spam bot. It would be terribly nice if I could delete the thing, but alas. It shows only in my connections, not in my contacts list or anywhere else. Thus can’t be removed.
March 9th, 2009 at 7:49 am
I would be good if the unfiled contacts could be sorted by contact status
March 9th, 2009 at 10:38 am
[...] Product Updates Back in October, Yahoo! redesigned its core profile pages, giving them a fresh new look and feel, and additional functionality. Your new profile will allow you to manage your image and establish connections with your friends [...]
March 9th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
What if you don’t want your 360 name/profile associated with your YA profile?
March 10th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
You know if you would get back to the search part like the old profile system or 360. We wouldn’t be worrying about that stupid contact list. We could pick our own friends as we see fit by contacting them with an invitation. The way it has worked for ever is ppl contact us through Ymessenger or Email and it goes from there. No one has ever had to choose my friends or tell me who to choose before and I just don’t like this now. Also I don’t really like this contact stuff in the Email. I don’t want to chat from Email. I have that profile hidden so people don’t see it, but there old friends that have been deleted in the past from one place or another. And some I don’t even know. This isn’t funny and it would be nice if you’d just do something we like for a change. We’re telling you but you refuse to listen. Why do you keep asking us what we want?
March 10th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Joy,
If you wish to disable connections from your mail page, just follow these steps:
If you’re using Classic Mail, click on “Options” and then “Mail Options” in the top right corner. Then, click on “General Preferences.” From here, deselect the box that says “Enable Connection-related features (Messages, Suggestions, Updates)” Click Save.
If you’re in All-New Mail, the steps are similar. Just click on “Options,” and “Mail Options” in the right corner. Under the “General” section, deselect the option of “Enable Connection-related features (Messages, Suggestions, Updates)”
Connections should disappear from your inbox.
If you’re looking to find people you already know and want to search for them, you can do this by going here: http://profiles.yahoo.com/people-search/ (it’s a bit hidden within profiles, so it’s often easier to just link to it). From here, you can search for people by their email address, first name, last name, or a combination of first and last. We’re not trying to choose your friends for you– we know that you do the best job of doing this and it would be silly for us to assume that you’d be compatible with total random strangers that you hadn’t already interacted with. All the people who come up as a suggestion have interacted with you in some way (like you mentioned, through messenger or mail, etc.) and are suggested based off of that.
-Melissa
March 11th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Thank you Melissa, this should help a lot. I had changed the mail options once so not sure what happened with that. As for the part about you choosing our friends though. I am partially correct in my statement. And it’s no fault of yours as you have no way of knowing who we really deem as close friends. The truth is they may be so close that we don’t wish them to be on our profile page. Therefore I wish the suggestion list on the upper right hand side of our profile did not list these people in yellow so we can’t help but see it no matter what we do. And yes I have to admit if they click on my ID they can look at my profile. Perhaps they don’t chose to use the profile page and I’m still stuck with looking at the yellow suggestion. I think I’ve made my point with that and no need to milk it to pieces. It’s unfortunate that over the years we have encountered so many people online that really didn’t mean much to us and now all this time later, it’s coming back to haunt us. Anyway I thank you for responding and helping as much as you did. I do appreciate it.
March 12th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Joy,
I agree you’re right– to get rid of the people in the yellow box you can ignore the request. Doing this will remove them from your list and from the box– once you’re out of suggestions, the box disappears.
-Melissa
March 14th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Am I reading you right. Your saying the yellow box is requests from those ppl? Perhaps I’ll just click on one and find out what happens.
March 14th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
OKAY, now I got it. There not requests, but suggestions and if you click on see more suggestions. A list pops up where you can remove them.
Thank you very much for the help.
I only have one more question and then I’m not going to bug you for awhile. Well, maybe it’s two questions actually.
(1) Does anyone know when 360 will be shutting down and will we be notified?
(2) What happens to all that data on our 360. Will Yahoo delete it?
March 13th, 2009 at 7:35 am
Melissa,
What about adding a “Y! Member Since”? I’m sure the data might be there somewhere and I’d love to know the exact day I got my very first Y! account.
Thanks and keep up the great work.
March 13th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Hi alex_mayorga,
I’m a bit confused– that is there!
Check out the third screenshot in the post above– it should also be on your own profile. 
It doesn’t give the exact date but it gives the month and year, which is still cool, and definitely gives you bragging rights over your friends if you’ve had your account for ages.
-Melissa
March 14th, 2009 at 11:35 am
The only problem with that Melissa? We don’t see it, just the people who visit our profile. So, unless I sign out and come back in an alias, then I see the member since information.
I should be able to see it without having to resort to logging in and out.
Just a suggestion.
Lacie
March 16th, 2009 at 9:45 am
I got confused somehow and I really didn’t see it before as per lacie’s comment. It is in there now, so I can now brag about it right?
“Member Since: Mar 1998″
If the actual date could be data mined I’d start celebrating my Y! “birthdays”
Thanks and keep it up.
March 17th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Sorry Alex, but I cannot see the “Member Since” on my profile…but my friends can see it.
The only way I can see that tidbit of information, which was always visible on the old profile…is to log in as another user. Wow! There it is, in the right hand bottom corner! So, kinda wanna know why I can’t see it when logged in as myself???
Lacie
March 16th, 2009 at 6:57 am
Thnk u Melissa, for ur all-out efforts.
U and concerned Yahoo team r requested to bring back “Online/Offline status Indicator” in Profiles, as “member since” feature has been brought back.
Thnks.
March 17th, 2009 at 9:04 am
I have to agree with Carls comment on March 7th, the new universal profile has been out a while and what do we get from it? NOTHING!
you cant change your background like in 360, you cant blog, no listing for rss feeds, groups, flickr, NOTHING! all you can really do is send comments to people and to top it off when you send a comment to someone a copy of it is on your page. hey maybe i dont want everyone seeing what i commented to someone.
and as for the YELLOW BOX, yea well i get recomendations in that thing all the time, problem is i dont know any of those people! funny it says i e-mail this person frequently or i im them frequently, but yet i dont. i think its just a way for yahoo to get their users to connect to others to help build a stronger network.
and why is it that alot of people on my friends list have a “?-a yahoo user” with the famous grey smiley face for an avatar by their name. and when you go to their page it hasent been touched in months. to me it looks alot like mash, at first it was great till everyone found out it was really useless and they jumped ship.
the only think that i have found that i like so far is the chat in mail function, the thing i dislike about it is you cant transfer files by drag and drop, no cam option, and no pic for avatar. for all its worth, i might as well just stick with messanger.
I think its really funny that Melissa wont even comment to the basic question, WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO 360? is it going to be fixed or shut down and if so WHEN? so how about it Melissa, any comment??
March 17th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Maybe she doesn’t know….?
Lacie~
March 17th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Did Yahoo remove the ability to upload photos from our computer?
I could do that a couple of weeks ago, but I couldn’t do it today. What’s up with that feature?
Lacie~
March 18th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Just one more feature that has stopped working and probally wont be working again for a while. We use to have 4 photos on our 360 profile, now its just 1 and a few red x’s. And back when Yahoo got rid of their photo program and decided to migrate to Flickr, it made things worse. Alot of people couldent figure out how to migrate their pics, the ones that did manage to transfer their stuff quickly found out it dident update. Now its just a bunch of grey boxes on the profile. Keep standing in line Lacie, maybe one day you will figure out what most of us already have.
p.s. I have posted the question on here and several other places, What is going to happen with 360? Just the simple fact Melissa Daniels has not responded to any of the questions should tell you something. Perhaps a few more people need to comment, on here. Ill pass this web addy along to everyone.
March 18th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
I should have made it clear that I was referring to the ‘profile’ picture, not Y360..and yes, I’ve stood in that line for a long time. It really doesn’t matter to me anymore…I would like a blogging feature on the profile page…whether its Y360 or an imitation of MySpace…just something!
Lacie~
March 18th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
I guess I should have made it clear I was referring to the “profile” picture, not Y360 pictures from Flicker.
March 18th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
wow..a double post…this is just like Y360..comments aren’t seen either, so we keep posting until they do! :=))
March 19th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Hi Lacie,
Next time, try refreshing in between repeat posts to make sure your post didn’t show up. Sometimes your browser doesn’t show the message, but it does actually register.
-Melissa
March 19th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Hi Lacie,
Nope– that feature should definitely still work. If you’re still having trouble, please be sure to report the issue to Customer Care– http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/profiles/general.html
-Melissa
March 18th, 2009 at 6:10 am
Well Lacie, I would venture to guess that she probally does know. She took over Yahoo Community Manager Matt Warburtons job last month. He was the manager for 360 so im sure shes up to speed about 360 by now. Yes I understand that all the new features trying to be added take alot of time and effort, but if you bother to go on 360 and in the upper right hand corner click on 360 news and read peoples blog comments then you will see what everyone is talking about. Everyone is upset because they have been promised for almost 2 years now that things will get better, but all they have done is get worse. In fact just last week, I lost the ability to update my 360 blog. Well if I cant blog and im already having problems answering messages and leaving comments, whats left? what is the point in continuing on 360 when theres plenty of other sites that have the same features with no issues. And believe me when I tell you im not the only one who feels this way. When I started on 360 several years ago, I would get 50 – 100 comments a day. Now im lucky if I get 10 in 3 days. I still have 290+ friends, but the majority havent been on their pages since early last year. People get tired of services that dont work, and they find services that do.
Ask yourself one question, lets say you went to a fast food restraunt drive thru and you waited 30 minutes in line to get a burger and fries, then it turns out the food wasent that good. So lets say you gave it another chance and this time you waited 40 minutes, with the same result. Would you go back yet again? some people would, and thats where we are basically at now, still waiting in line. Eventually your going to go across the street and wait about 5 minutes in line and get good food.
So realistically theres only one question left, how much longer do we wait in line Melissa? Are you going to close 360, or just leave us sitting here waiting for service thats never going to come?
March 18th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
More problems with the new profile. It appears that not everyone got their new pages made by Yahoo for one reason or another. These ppl don’t know how to accept our invites, they haven’t even begun to learn about this yet. So it brings up new questions. (1) Should we even be inviting ppl to join us yet? If you don’t give us any information on a use by date how can we know what to do. (2) What happens to those invites. Will they eventually be deleted by the system?
Here’s an example of a page in question . Searching by Email it has a blank profile with not one thing on it, except that email ID no little place that say’s (invite to connect) Yet when you search by the 360 ID it has a blank page with nothing but part of the ID and it does say (invite to connect) When the party tried to accept my invite she was told she needed to start a page. This kind of stuff just leaves us in the dark and how is it ever going to be resolved? Okay that’s a few questions but there all valid and we do need to know this stuff. So far you have done well to give me some good answers and I am hoping you can do that again. Thanks.
March 19th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Joy,
Invitations don’t expire so you’re welcome to invite people whenever you’d like.
As far as your second issue goes, those could be two separate users– the first one doesn’t have an “invite to connect” button because they haven’t gone into their profile and activated it yet.
If you’re talking about your ID, please send me the links so I can look into it as I’m afraid I’m getting a bit lost in your explanation.
yprofileblog [at] yahoo [dot] com
If your friend is trying to accept the connection and does not have a valid Yahoo! ID she must first create a YID before accepting a connection. If she has a YID and hasn’t filled out her profile and is trying to accept a connection, she must complete her profile first.
-Melissa
April 24th, 2009 at 6:44 am
thankssssss a lots
March 19th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
When are the questions on 360 going to be finally answered once and for all? Why has there been virtually no info on the site for the last couple of years except for a couple of worthless updates that provided no info on the future of the site? Why are questions not answered in customer service. 360 should be ether deleted and taken off life support or all the bugs fixed once and for all.
March 28th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I don’t have time to read all the comments. I just want to share that Flickr lacks a link to Yahoo 360 (beta) and Yahoo 360 doesn’t support HTML yet… If i can’t find an “edit post source” option.
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I REALLY LIKE THE GOOD THINGS THAT YOU GOOD FRIENDS ARE DOING PLEASE KEEP UP AND NEVER STOP
April 15th, 2009 at 11:23 am
On the profile, why isnt there a spot to add more pics? I dont like the idea of having to change my profile pic, i wanna add more.
April 27th, 2009 at 11:37 am
I had a very bad experience with Flickr when they made one of my images non-public without notifying me. When I noticed the image was non-public I thought it was a mistake, switched it back to public and didn’t think about it again.
The next day, someone named Heather Champ sent me a testy email threatening to eliminate my account if I repeated this action. At that point I became angry and gave her a testy reply (nothing abusive, mind you, just “you need to back off and realize that I didn’t know what was up.”).
Well, moments later, Heather turned around and deleted my entire premium account.
Unbelievable. Flickr should have notified me in the first place when they changed the setting on an image I had posted. That’s bad customer service and bound to cause misundertandings. And then to take the drastic action of deleting my entire account as though I were just some scofflaw — outrageous.
I’ll never use Flickr again, and I always tell others what happened to me. There are other photo hosting services that don’t take this high-and-mighty approach with customers.
PS: naturally, Flickr has no phone number. The only live person I spoke with was some AT&T Yahoo employee in Southeast Asia who could do nothing about my issue.
May 1st, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Marc,
In Heather’s defense, she’s a fantastic community manager that really has Flickr’s best interests at heart. I’m sorry you had such a bad experience as I’m sure it was a misunderstanding. Nevertheless, my apologies.
While I can’t comment on yours (or anyone else’s) specific experience with account closures or TOS, I can say that there are specific guidelines/rules/regulations that Yahoo! must adhere to and comply with as a part of being a large corporation. While these rules can sometimes be inflexible and can make us come off like royal pains in the you know what, sometimes our hands are tied, as far as what we can (and cannot) say, when we can say it, and when we’re allowed to say it.
As far as customer care goes, Yahoo! doesn’t offer phone based support for probably 95% of our properties (the exceptions are paid properties/services like Yahoo! Small Business accounts and broadband accounts like the AT&T account you mentioned– which is a paid service). It’s not that you had an unruly agent or we’re trying to hide our phone number from you– it’s that it’s just not there. With the sheer volume of reports we see each and every day, it’s just not feasible.
Also, I’m not surprised the agent you spoke to in SE Asia wasn’t able to help– just because it says Yahoo! on it, doesn’t mean it’s all the same. AT&T Yahoo! support services are for AT&T services– broadband connections, email, etc.. NOT for Yahoo! properties. To get the best service you should always go to the help pages for the specific property you’re having trouble with, and either search for a FAQ or, find a help form. (For reference, here’s the profiles help form: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/profiles/general.html and here’s the one for Abuse: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/profiles/abuse.html )
Again, I’m sorry you had a bad experience with Flickr all those years ago and hope that this information on CC will help in the future.
-Melissa
May 1st, 2009 at 5:51 am
Marc,
was the privatised image anything that could in any way be considered “adult” content? a little too unclothed? only legit reason for them to hide an image of yours would be if it didn’t pass the guidelines for public display.
Were you ever given a REASON for why they changed it?
If you were given a reason, and that reason WAS that it was an image not suitable for public viewing, THEN you committed a Terms of Service violation by insisting on putting it public again.
If you were not given a reason and/or the image was totally innocent, then you fell foul of the Yahoo–wide “unexplained suspension”, which more and more people are finding themselves falling victim to.
Re the ???Avatars —–yes, you could delete Messenger contacts but NOT remove yourself from the other person’s lists. You could until about Messenger 7. Then they dropped it. There is a good free outside program that DOES let you remove yourself from other people’s lists. A good user with 3 years at Answers got suspended, without warning or explanation, for giving the download link for that program.
So you either have to find that program for yourself (try googling YBuddy) or put up with the GreyGrins with ? for a name that represent people you tried to get rid of years ago.
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:24 pm
How do people seach your profile? How can they do that?
May 27th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
I have clicked every link in every Help page I can find and every time I get:Sorry, this profile cannot be retrieved at the moment. Please try again.
For Six Months!!!!
And I have e-mailed Customer Service, Feedback….etc. etc.
No reply.
Any suggestions?
R
May 31st, 2009 at 1:01 pm
“Yahoo Profile” should have: Page view, Who’s the last visitor.
June 1st, 2009 at 7:44 am
I cannot see my profile after moving my Yahoo 360 Blog to my profile !Help me !Thanks
June 10th, 2009 at 5:34 am
Got all of my 360 blogs transferred successfully. Now, in writing a new blog, once I click to post it I am getting small boxes or question marks showing up in the spaces between the sentences. Looks like if I’ve spaced twice after a period before starting the new sentence one of those boxes or symbols shows up once it is posted. Very unsightly. Also, the blog editor doesn’t allow me to change the font or color of the entire blog at once. Only one paragraph at a time (or less). Have never had this problem with any other application.
June 11th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Hi Kathy,
I’ve followed up with you via email regarding your issue.
If anyone else is having this problem, please send me your operating system, what browser you’re using, and any additional information you can provide to yahooprofiles [at] yahoo-inc [dot] com.
-Melissa
July 21st, 2009 at 12:18 pm
By creating and using your Yahoo! account, you agree to abide by
Yahoo!’s Terms of Service (TOS). Pursuant to the TOS, Yahoo! reserves
the right to terminate your account or otherwise prohibit use of your
account in the event that, among other things, Yahoo! believes that you
have violated or acted inconsistently with the letter or spirit of the
TOS.
Yahoo send me an this warning I don’t know why noting wrong my profile I need a explanition
July 21st, 2009 at 12:20 pm
By creating and using your Yahoo! account, you agree to abide by
Yahoo!’s Terms of Service (TOS). Pursuant to the TOS, Yahoo! reserves
the right to terminate your account or otherwise prohibit use of your
account in the event that, among other things, Yahoo! believes that you
have violated or acted inconsistently with the letter or spirit of the
TOS.
Yahoo send me an this warning I don’t know why noting wrong my profile I need a explanation please
June 10th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
how do i do this how do i start?
June 14th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I would like to see a preview button in ‘blog editor’ I know about the ‘html’ button but it doesn’t shiow you exactly what your blog gonna look like when you save/post your blog entry.
Regards Jimmy
June 15th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Hi Jimmy,
This has been suggested by a couple of users and has been added to the list of enhancements.
-Melissa
June 15th, 2009 at 12:52 am
how I can search for fried from yahoo 360 how was in my favorite but not not in my contact
how i can search for someone in yahoo by name or e-mail
June 15th, 2009 at 5:46 am
Will the ‘Sorry this profile cannot be retrieved at this time’ problem EVER get solved or should I just give up and move to MSN?
June 16th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Hi!!! I am not very techy and i have no idea how to get my yahoo 360 blog to my profile. I read all the stuff about it and have no idea what to do!!! Plez help!! Important things that took a long time to rite well mainly in my 7th hour but still I put my stuff in there and I dont want to loose it. plez plez plez help me!
June 18th, 2009 at 1:43 am
I hate it when we comment on friends profile pages and ones comments are transferred back to ones own page. What is the point in that and i for one don’t want my comment box clogged up with my own comments. Please get rid of this silly pointless feature and lets us post our comments in the same way as we do on 360…and when are we able to customize our page with a background and colours. The new profile page is so boring..it needs spicing up and FAST!!!…Get a move on Yahoo. You’re slower than a slimy slug getting into gear…Be warned if you don’t get a move on soon, no-one will be around and interested in using your new profiles..hint hint!!!!
June 18th, 2009 at 8:00 am
I love the way my Yahoo 360 blog looks: the colors, the layout, the stat counter, the blast, the blogroll, everything. Is there any way to export/then import my style sheet/template to another blog site? I don’t know how to write it myself. I don’t want to loose the look of my blog.
June 19th, 2009 at 4:09 am
i was using my very close friends computer and discovered she had added a new screen name which when i looked later on my computer,it took me to a contact card with limited information. but what i found cureious was that at the top was the “yahoo deucheland” logo. i have learned that its probably an alias and she hadnt activated the profile page yet. whats the deal with the different country and why do you suppose she did that from another country???? is she being secretive now?
June 20th, 2009 at 9:43 am
hi. like the blog thing. but i am wondering, will guestbooks also be able to do the same, hyperlinks, media, etc.? thanks!
July 7th, 2009 at 5:59 am
Still waiting for the profile cannot be retrieved problem to disappear…
July 14th, 2009 at 6:03 am
The best information i have found exactly here. Keep going Thank you