Hi, guys. I know that this administrative stuff gets dull, but
somebody raised a point that might be of concern to some of you.
In a short while, Yahoo 360 is expected to go the way of Yahoo
Photos, because an incoming executive at Yahoo has decided that
all of a user's different Yahoo profiles need to be merged into
one so that he will have "a more integrated experience", whether
he wants one or not, I suppose. The great unanswered question is
what happens when one's various Yahoo ids start getting merged,
which one would think would be the implication of this. Are we
about to find ourselves looking at a massive breach of privacy
here at Yahoo?

With up to five different profiles on a membership, you can use
one profile for one group, another profile for another group,
and nobody but you and Yahoo will know that these two profiles
are both you. This, I would argue, is right and proper - just
because you want to share one part of your life with some people
you know, that doesn't mean that you necessarily want to share
all other parts of your life with those same people. The
existence of multiple ids allows the user the freedom to
exercise discretion in this.

If there are two groups of associates who you really don't
want to bring together this way, now might be the time to start
strategically deleting ids. I don't know for a fact that this
will prove necessary, but based on nonresponsiveness of the
Yahoo staff to queries about the future of Yahoo 360 during
the last few months, I think that I can say with some confidence
that you won't be hearing back from them until after the
transition. In one way or another, you will be leaping before
you look, so you might want to give some throught to where you
would most mind landing, and plan accordingly.


Joseph Dunphy