Mash

You’ve asked for more customization of your Mash page and we’re here to give you the good stuff! Did you know that the Module Gallery has tons of great styles! You can now grab a pre-made style to suit your personality and interests in the “styles” tab (link to the style tab) on the Module Gallery.

To add a fresh look to your profile, venture to the bottom of your Profile page to the “Style your profile” module and click the “cool themes” link (link to the style tab). We’ll take you straight to the “styles” tab where you can browse the themes by popularity, most recently added, or tags. Explore themes by clicking tags in the tag cloud, and the style gallery will display the relevant styles that you can use.

To apply a style to your profile, click the “Grab it” button next to its description, and the new styling will appear on your page! (The style code will be inserted into the style module in advanced CSS mode.) Come back to the style gallery often for updated themes and styles!

Happy Friday!

Natalie, Community Manager for Mash

With 2007 swiftly coming to a close I’d like to raise a glass and toast the Mash community for your support and feedback since Mash’s arrival in September.

The Mash team has spent the past few months listening to your ideas on the suggestion board and blog and have transformed your feedback into features such as Private Messaging and the Profile View Counter module, which have shaped the socially editable profile we’re all proud to be a part of.

In 2007 we hooked you up with customization techniques using CSS, Flickr photo integration, Yahoo! Pipes, and pimping out your Pet. The Team was stoked to bring you the ability to track your invites and choose any of several languages to expand your Mash experience.

Your dedication to “mashing” has helped the community grow tremendously worldwide! We couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks for sending out invites to friends, family, coworkers, and all the other folks.

So, here’s to you – the Mash community. May you continue to mash on in the new year!

Cheers!

Natalie and the entire Mash Team

Hola, Mashers!

You can now use Mash in Spanish, Vietnamese, and Portuguese (and English of course).

To change the language of the site, click the language you want at the bottom of any Mash page, and poof! The site will reload in the language you’ve chosen. Note that any text you or your friends have added to your profile will stay in its original language. Here’s a screenshot of the language picker:

So, now you and your friends can see Mash in a whole new way.

Gracias!

Natalie, Community Manager for Mash

Yahoo! Mash is in invite-only beta, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t want you to share in the fun. We’re testing things out and putting in new features every day and want you to be a part of it!

We’ve received hundreds of requests for invites on the blog, but unfortunately we can’t keep up with the demand. To make the experience better for everyone, we’ll be removing all current and future requests for invites, leaving only topic-related comments.

Here’s a list of websites where you can sign up for an invite to Yahoo! Mash.

Yahoo! Mash Group

360 Themes

Mashable

Thanks again for your continued interest in Yahoo! Mash!

Natalie, Community Manager for Mash

Hundreds of people look at your Mash page every day. Or maybe it’s just one person. You’ll never know — unless you have the handy Profile View Counter module. That’s right, folks! For an unlimited time, you can now keep track of your popularity with the Profile View Counter module.

You’ll find the Profile View Counter module in the Module Gallery or grab it from someone else’s page. The page count starts at zero, but you can watch it grow with every visitor to your Profile page. (Of course, we don’t count you when you go to your own page.)

The Profile View Counter module continues to count visits to your Profile page until it’s removed. Then if it’s added back to your profile, it starts at the number that was left when it was removed.

If you don’t want friends and family to be able to remove the Profile View Counter module, be sure to set your Settings appropriately!

Cheers,

Natalie, Community Manager for Mash

Greetings, Mashers! My name is Sumeet and here at Yahoo!, I convert caffeine to code, lots of it. I get to work on some awesome features, and one of the most awesome is in Yahoo! Messenger – emoticons. Emoticons are like smileys with attitude and can add a dimension to self-expression to your instant messages.

Guess what? Now you can add that same attitude when you write in your friends’ guestbooks! You can insert those animated emoticons within your message and watch it come to life.

To add emoticons in a guestbook message, visit a friend’s profile, and scroll down to the guestbook. Notice the icon? Click it to unfold a horde of emoticons. (To hide them, click it again.) Click any emoticon to insert it anywhere in the message. (You’ll actually see the corresponding HTML code, thanks to me.) When you’re done typing your message, click the “say it” button and we’ll replace the code with the emoticons in all its animated glory.

Do the Mash, with Emoticon Power!

Sumeet

Are you embarrassed by that third-grade nickname someone revealed in your About Me module? Tired of coworkers saying that you’d be a French ostrich if you were an animal? Do you wish you had a module about yourself that only YOU could fill out and edit? Well, now you do.

Every Mash Profile page now has a My Details module that only the profile owner can edit. In other words, only you can edit your My Details module! Details include your contact information, schools you attended, your work experience and affiliations, and your favorite things. It’s perfect for expressing who you are to the rest of the Mash community, safe from the meddling keyboards of your friends.

Your My Details module can be seen by everyone who can see your profile, so don’t be surprised if you expose some details that attract old and new friends! Share an array of info about yourself, like your favorite music, movies, books, foods, and places. Since Mash is a great networking tool, it’s wise to fill out the schools and work sections.

And you can check out other Mashers’ details and maybe discover some folks who share your interests or background. Want to know if someone is interested in accompanying you on future outings? Check out their list of “movies I want to see” and “places I want to visit.”

To get started, click the “Edit details” button in the My Details module on your Profile page. Then on the My Details page, fill out as much info as you want (be sure to click save when you’re finished) and feel secure in the knowledge that no one else can touch it.

Now get your Mash on!!

Erica

Have you wondered how you can mash your friends’ profiles after you’ve sent a gazillion Mash invites? Or maybe your best friend lost their email invitation and need it re-sent ASAP! Never fear, we’re coming at you live this week with our Pending Invites feature!

With the Pending Invites feature you can track the friends you created profiles for and see if they’ve claimed their profile, re-mash their profiles easily and quickly, and resend lost invites. You’ll find Pending Invites under its own tab on the Friends section at the top of your homepage. Your friends are listed alphabetically so you can find them fast – even if you’ve sent a ginormous number of invites.

The Pending Invites list shows your friend’s name (that you assigned to them), email address (that you used to create the profile), and invite expiration date. If you sent the invite more than 10 days ago, it will be invalid, your friend will be removed from the pending invites friends list, and the profile will be deleted. So, you’ll have to invite your friend again to Mash. If you resend an invite within 10 days after you first created it, your friend has an additional 10 days — from the day you re-sent the invite — to claim the profile.

It’s Here To Stay,

Natalie, Community Manager for Mash

Have you seen a strange face living on your page called “Mash Pet”? You can do a variety of things to it like snorgle, lick, slap, and zap. But did you know you can also give your pet a facelift with just a few simple settings?

Pssst. Come a little closer. Here’s what you need to do to use the secret settings: Use the Mash Pet’s “change name” link to bring up a field to input special values! But, here’s the trick. The special values don’t actually change your pet’s name. They actually change your pet’s mood or its picture!

Change Your Pet’s Mood

The simplest secret setting to change is your Mash Pet’s mood. Use the “change name” link to bring up the editable field. Input “banana:mood=number” where number is a whole number less than 60. Try changing your pet’s name to “banana:mood=0″ and see what happens. Change your pet’s name to “banana:mood=30″ to change its mood to “meh.” Continue flipping through the emotions and find one that you want to use for our next secret setting, changing the Mash Pet picture!

Change Your Pet’s Image

Wanna step it up? Change your Mash Pet’s image to suit its mood. Find any images you want to use for the moods — dead, dejected, sad, meh, content, or happy. The images should be 185 pixels wide and must be on the Web somewhere. (Did we mention we like to use the pix on Flickr?)

Then, to make your pet use a custom images for one of its moods, change its name to a special value with the following syntax:

banana:img.MoodName=Image_URL

MoodName should be one of happy, content, meh, sad, dejected, dead; and Image_URL should be the URL of a publicly accessible, existing image on the web, 185 pixels wide.

Just plug in a mood and the URL of the image you want for that mood, and set the name. For example, you could set your Mash Pet’s name to banana:img.meh=http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1330/1371251598_cfd4a7a1e3_o.gif to change the image shown for your pet when its mood is “meh.”

To completely customize all the moods for your pet, you would have to change the name once for each of the six possible moods. In in other words you would have to set each of the following six names:

banana:img.happy=Insert_URL_of_happy_pet
banana:img.content=Insert_URL_of_content_pet
banana:img.meh=Insert_URL_of_meh_pet
banana:img.sad=Insert _URL_of_sad_pet
banana:img.dejected=Insert_URL_of_dejected_pet
banana:img.dead=Insert_URL_of_dead_pet

There are more secret settings, so keep your eyes on the blog for more updates!

Cheers!

Natalie, Community Manager for Mash

Hello, Mashers! My name is Frederique. I’m a product manager on the Mash team. I’ll be blogging here to tell you about new features. And I can’t wait for you try our latest addition to Mash: private messaging.

Now you have an alternative to your public Mash guestbook. With private messaging, you and your fellow Mashers can communicate with each other one-on-one. The messages are sent to the primary email address that you’ve selected on Mash.

Here’s how to send a message:

1. Go to your friend’s Mash page and click the “send a message” link on the profile card. You’ll go to the Compose a Message page.

2. Type your message.

3. Type the code that’s shown. (We provide this feature to prevent automated emails from spamming our Mashers.)

4. Click “send message.”

You’ll return to the recipient’s Mash page and a banner at the top of the page lets you know that the message was sent.

Here’s how to view and reply to messages:

1. Open the email in your primary email application. The sender of the email will be Mash Notifications.

2. To view the profile of the person who sent the message, click the link displayed with “To view … profile, click here.”

3. To reply to the email, click the link following “To reply to this message, click here.” You’ll go to Mash’s Compose a Message page. Type your message and the code and click “send message.”

Keep in mind that we don’t store a copy of any private messages you send or receive in Mash.

So, there you have it. Now go share your Mash secrets and tips with your friends. Woohoo!

Happy Private Messaging,

Frederique