>Yahoo had a lot of social networking features early on, before it was really even called that: games, chat, personals, message boards (for stocks/finance, etc.

>Yahoo had a lot of social networking features early on, before it was really even called that: games, chat, personals, message boards (for stocks/finance, etc.) Exactly. Yahoo had more organic pieces of a true social network than Google ever did. In addition to the ones you listed, there were their news properties, groups, fantasy sports, and later on, properties like Delicious, Flickr and Tumblr. They could have had something really interesting under good management (admittedly a huge caveat). They had the pieces to a more plausible facebook competitor than Google ever did, and even Google's best potential seed of a social network, Google Reader, was mismanaged in a failure of strategic vision. In any case, I'm not among those who think Yahoo was doomed. They had the pieces to become something interesting.