Yahoo and Oracle’s social networking ambition's

Look’s like yahoo is trying all the tricks in the world to be back in the social networking game. I have a feeling that they are way too late in this space. Having dished out mash couple of weeks back, I still wonder how many users did actually embrace this platform. And now, couple of day’s back they came up with KickStart for out of college students. Pretty interesting. I read lot of article’s comparing KickStart with LinkedIn. I still fail to understand the real value of LinkedIn, except for seeing all my old colleagues in my contact list; I have not yet seen the cool factor in them. Bottom line -- LinkedIn is so offline. Hope things shall change once developers write some cool applications using OpenSocial for LinkedIn.

So what’s the story with Kickstart and Mash --



Mash is a social networking site similar to facebook and myspace. But a lighter version. In fact, the website looks more like myspace and facebook combination. According to yahoo, its ambition is not to make stand-alone social network and compete with facebook and MySpac. Instead, yahoo Mash will eventually become a layer on top of its various web services. The bigger ambition is to make yahoo as the platform and integrated all the services together. I guess inbox 2.0 is part of this bigger strategy. Fs YI, it’s an invite only site for now. I have some invite, leave a comment with your email id, I will send in the invites



KickStart is for out of college grads. According to yahoo, KickStart is a professional network that intends "to connect college students, recent grads, professionals, and
Alumni" so they can exchange information about internships, jobs, or mentorship’s. To encourage participation, Yahoo said it will donate $25,000 to the alumni association whose college has the most profiles by the end of this year.
Well this one is going to be a big gamble. How many social networking communities will the consumers use? In addition, not sure why would somebody leave facebook and LinkedIn for KickStart. Only time will tell.

Here is oracle’s foray into social networking. It’s a surprising move. I had commented earlier saying “what was Oracle doing in the OpenSocial . So now it makes sense and clear why Oracle became a partner in OpenSocial deal. So is there something for common users? I doubt it. Looks like the social tools they are building is for enterprise market. So this is something to do with enterprise 2.0 than web 2.0.

Oracle has been experimenting internal social networking for quite sometime now.
Some of the social apps from oracle are :
• Oracle WIKI ( uses wiki platform Wetpaint )
• Oracle MIX , a social networking site for customers with idea voting, groups, user profiles, and Q&A.

Check out oracle’s Blog for more info