• The New York Times, Monday, September 17, 2007 11:15 AM

Saul Hansell, technology writer for The New York Times, opens his review of Yahoo Mash with the following: "I just turned Brad Garlinghouse's profile on Yahoo's new social network, Yahoo Mash, peanut butter brown." Garlinghouse, of course, is the Yahoo executive of "Peanut Butter Manifesto" fame; the fact that Hansell has changed the color of his profile is significant. Mash allows you to do something that Facebook, MySpace, et. al. don't: edit your friend's profiles. That's right, Mash adds an element of Wikipedia to social networking. You can change information, redecorate and add features to your friends' profiles. Think Facebook wall 2.0.

Of course, you can undo whatever is done to your page, or add and subtract those with access to changing it, but the fact that friends can do this immediately differentiates Mash from all other social networks. Of course, there's nothing stopping Facebook and MySpace from adding a similar feature tomorrow. However, it seems like Mash is trying to carve a little social networking niche for itself. Some of its features seem to be aimed at younger users: its "About Me" section includes silly fill-in-the-blanks like "If I were an animal, I would be" and "My celebrity look-a-likes." You can also add a Neopet-like figure that you and your friends care for.

Mash also has widgets, called "modules," which developers will be able to create, too. One cool at-work time-waster is the "Wheel of Lunch," in which you type in your Zip code and spin a wheel containing Yahoo Local restaurant results. Another has a paddleball game using a picture of Karl Marx.

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