Yahoo Mixd
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Mixd was Yahoo's experimental SMS-based group messaging and mobile social networking service, launched in November 2006 for the youth market. Users texted the short code 445566 to coordinate last-minute meetups ('mixers') and share pictures and videos from their phones, with a website auto-created for each event. It was Yahoo's first in-house service launched as a separate brand without the Yahoo prefix.
02 / Yahoo Mixd FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Mixd was an experiment that never grew beyond its pilot: after a two-month trial Yahoo closed it and folded group texting and multimedia sharing into future Yahoo Mobile products. Its quick death was read at the time as Yahoo's 'peanut butter manifesto' in action — trimming a sprawling product portfolio.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Launched
Yahoo quietly launched Mixd, an SMS group-messaging service marketed on college campuses.
- Closed
After a two-month pilot, Yahoo closed Mixd; group texting and media-sharing features were folded into future Yahoo Mobile products.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
The pilot ran about two months; no financial details were disclosed.
- 02
No loss figure exists for the experiment; loss_amount is left null.