I’ve played with this for awhile now, and watched other people play with it; these are my brief initial impressions (remembering that this is still in Beta):
- This is not a real blogging tool, though it would work fine for
a journal or diary to share with friends. In fact, if I use the
blogging feature at all, this will be why; the privacy features are
great. You can specify a particular group of people who can see it. The
ability to set privacy by post, rather than for the entire blog, would
make it more flexible. - The simplicity of the blogging feature should make it accessible to non-techies.
- It is kind of nice to have a page with photos and links to friends
— but of course I already have a version of that, with my blogrolls,
for web-friends. I would like to use 360 for personal friends and family, but so far even those who accepted the invitation are not using their page. - I joined because I adore Flickr, and given that Yahoo just bought Flickr, I’m expecting some integration. That hasn’t happened yet.
- The Yahoo Photos feature
seems, well . . . ordinary. I’m reluctant to upload photos there, since
mine are already on Flickr, and I’m counting on the above point. Yahoo
Photos offers printing service, which Flickr does not — but I’ve no
idea of the quality. - I’m not an Instant Messaging user, at least not much — and if I do use it I sign on to Chatango — but I expect that folks who do use IM will get more out of 360.
- I don’t know how to do the degree character, and I’ll bet most of you don’t either; I’ll also bet they drop this, and go to plain 360 when they come out of beta.
So, in brief, my hope is that this service becomes more and more
simple to use, so that folks who are currently intimidated by the web
will be comfortable with it. I would really like my InRealLife friends to have an easy, fun, and useful way to start using the internet for more than email.
More reviews here, here, here, and an interesting note here.
ADDITION April 4: striatic has a user narrative perspective here. There is some really good discussion in the comments on his post, too.
I have lots of invitations; email me if you’d like one (email link on sidebar.)
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