Yahoo decided to put an end to its social-networking experiment, Yahoo Mash, after only one year of activity.

All Mash members received an e-mail from Yahoo community manager Matt Warburton, which noted: "Thank you for trying out our Mash Beta service. We hope you had fun with it. Please note that we will shut down Mash on September 29, 2008. As a result, your current profile on Mash will no longer be available."

Yahoo Mash was developed as an upgrade for Yahoo 360, which also failed to win the popularity contest with the other networking Web sites.

The service was far from reaching the company’s expectations, as it never really managed to make itself known and appreciated to social-networking enthusiasts. This lack of appeal could be linked to the fact that Mash did not offer any significant improvement to the features already out there through MySpace and Facebook. There was one new feature worth mentioning which instead of inviting your friends to join, it allowed you to create profiles for them and then encourage them to adopt the profile and customize it. Some found this option rather intrusive.

The company’s officials explained that the move will not affect Yahoo 360’s activity, which will still be available, just as before. There is no doubt that 360 could use a bit of a makeover and a strong advertising campaign, especially now when Mash’s days are numbered.

Even though some might think that its more than 500 million users would represent a clear route to success when it comes to social-networking businesses, Yahoo seems to have a hard time finding the right way of using its assets.