Yahoo Vietnam chief Vu Minh Tri on May 29 announced that as of July 13, 2009, Yahoo would officially stop providing the Yahoo 360 social network service in Vietnam. The replacement will be Yahoo 360 plus.

Tri said within 24-48 hours (from May 29), Yahoo Vietnam would inform all Yahoo 360 bloggers of this announcement and assist them in moving to Yahoo 360 plus.

The first rumour of the imminent death of Yahoo 360 appeared a half year ago. Some Vietnamese bloggers have gradually moved their “houses” to other networks like Multiply, Facebook, WordPress, Blogspot, Youbanbe and Tamtay.

In Vietnam, Yahoo 360 is the most popular social network but in the world, the number of users is modest compared to those of Facebook or Myspace. The close of this service is part of Yahoo’s plan to restructure its services.

In the past several months, Yahoo 360 has shown many errors, which have annoyed Vietnamese users very much.

With a large community of users in Vietnam, Yahoo will continue to provide a blog service through Yahoo 360 plus. Bloggers can move their blogs to the new site and their entries will be maintained.

Yahoo 360 Plus is entirely Vietnamised, with some new functions that the current service doesn’t have. However, this service also has shown many shortcomings. Many users also worry that Yahoo will change its policy in the future again so they are tending to go with Facebook, Multiply, WordPress, Blogspot, Youbanbe and Tamtay.

VietNamNet/TT/DT