Yahoo, in an effort to capture market share in the Web 2.0 social networking market, has just released their new social network, named Mash. They seem to have taken special care to make it something that could be used as a verb, as all over your profile (and others’ profiles, as well), you are encouraged to “mash” things. Mashing, however, does not have to damage the page as the word implies, mashing is more of a word for edit, as each profile has elements of a wiki, in that if the owner allows it, friends and family (or anyone) can modify the profile.

When you first look at your profile, it is filled up with default blocks (modules) which are drag and drop, and are reminiscent of Yahoo and Google’s personal homepage services. A few modules of note are the “Blurbs,” which are very similar to Twitter or Facebook’s status functions and the “Style this Profile” block, which lets you customize simple elements of your profile, about the same as Twitter’s design functions. A neat way to further customize your profile is to create and add your own modules to your Mash, very similar to the iGoogle Gadget functionality.

It’s a nice service, but it doesn’t do anything that I can’t already do with other sites and social networks. It reminds me a bit of Vox, except with much less functionality. It does feature integration with other Yahoo! services (don’t all Yahoo! services integrate with one another?), but doesn’t Yahoo already have a social network? I kind of liked Yahoo! 360 more.

Adding friends is kind of a funky process, requiring you to create a profile for the person if they don’t have one already. I don’t really like other people being able to edit my public profile, so this bothers me a bit.

Honestly, I think you’d be better off somewhere else. Mash may improve in the future, but it seems to be relatively pointless; unless Yahoo! is trying to make people-oriented wiki’s for gossipy teen girls, they’re not going to get anywhere with Mash. If you do want to mess around with it a bit, I have unlimited invites, so just comment and use your real email address.