Yahoo! Inc. announced the debut of Yahoo! 360, a new service that allows users to share and create blogs, share photos and recommend favorites.

Yahoo! 360 is only available through an invitation-only beta but the company says it plans to add additional features and functionalities. Currently, Yahoo! 360 combines Yahoo!'s services such as Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Photos, Yahoo! Local, LAUNCHcast Music, Yahoo! Groups and Yahoo! blogs.

"Consumers are looking for a new type of service that takes the best of first generation social networking services and successfully integrates it with communications, self-publishing and community tools," says Dan Rosensweig, chief operating officer of Yahoo!.

"Yahoo! 360 will offer consumers an innovative and engaging way for people to share their lives, leverage their community and get the most out of their online experience," adds Rosenweig.

Analysts are curious how Yahoo! will integrate its different services with the newly created blog service.

"I'm interested to see how they link up Yahoo!IM and My Yahoo! to the blog platform. Will I be able to post via my IM? Will my calendar and portfolio be available on my blog if I want? There are some exciting potential integrations," says Jason Calacanis, co-founder, Weblogs, Inc.

"Clearly Yahoo! is taking blogs very seriously. It was the first portal to have an RSS reader, and now it is catching up with Microsoft, AOL, and Google in having a blog platform," adds Calacanis.