Yahoo! has just entered the blogosphere with Yahoo! 360, a blogging tool combined with photo sharing and social networking. This follows suit of both MSN and Google adding blog services to their rosters. I think these easy platforms will invite a lot of people to enter into blogging who perhaps may not have before.

When I visit the Yahoo! 360 site, I am invited to be on the "waiting list" for the beta release - invitation only at this point. Not the warmest of invites, but it definitely will hype it up a bit. CNET reports Yahoo! 360 will open up on March 29.

Yahoo 360 combines a new blogging tool along with several longtime Yahoo products, including instant messaging, photo storage and sharing, and Internet radio. It also offers tools for sharing recommendations about places to eat, favorite movies, music and so on. [CNET]

As noted over at RSS News, Yahoo! 360 is a "mashup of Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Photos, My Yahoo! and Yahoo! Messenger" with blogging and moblogging components thrown in for good measure. It does seem a little overdone, but on the other sense the integration could prove really useful. From the info sheet provided on the new release, people will be able to define access controls, upload contacts from Yahoo messenger, yahoo address book, and even Microsoft Outlook - all with easy "point and click" designs. Yahoo even makes it easy to drag over content from reviews (yours or those in your network), discussion groups, or photo albums.

What makes this Yahoo! 360 release so powerful is that it can use all this integration to leverage its preexisting 165 million users and social groups into a sophisticated social network.

Yahoo also is making it easier for the service's users to connect with others who share common interests and friends — a practice known as social networking. Participants can choose to either open their blogs to the entire world or restrict access to people invited through e-mail.

"We heard from people that they have a strong desire to stay close to the people who are important to them, but at the same time they didn't want to feel like they were exposing themselves online," said Julie Herendeen, Yahoo's vice president of network products.

Since I am not on the invite list right now, I cannot tell you what part of the hype on this new release will live up to its potential. If you want a really good look into the features and their capabilities, take a look at this post by Marc Canter.