Yahoo 360, once the company's best bet to compete in the social-networking market, will shut down on July 13, by which time its users should have migrated over to the new service, the company Friday.

When it first announced in October 2007 that it would close Yahoo 360, the company said its intention was to transition to a "universal" Yahoo profile, a plan it reiterated when it launchedits ambitious Yahoo Open Strategy (Y OS) in April 2008.

In September 2008, it closed its other social-networking site, Yahoo Mash, which never evolved beyond an early stage service.

However, it wasn't untilOctober 2008 thatthe company launched its "universal" profile service, Yahoo Profiles, which incorporates basic social-networking functions, giving people the ability to publish information about their lives, create a list of friends, broadcast status updates and keep a blog with text entries, photos, videos and Web links.

Still, Yahoo Profiles doesn't match the features of Yahoo 360, as acknowledged by Melissa Daniels, Yahoo's community manager, on Friday's .