Yahoo is reportedly working on a new social networking service for college students dubbed "KickStart." But instead of going after the dominance of big players Facebook or MySpace, Yahoo apparently wants to create a LinkedIn style job network to connect college students with people at companies where they would like to have jobs. However, to join a company group first they need to receive an invite from a former student who works at that company. As the article explains, Yahoo's idea is three-fold:
First, connect students with alumni of their schools who work for the company the student is interested in --- that's the main social networking aspect. The second portion of KickStart is the usual profile page, but in this case the profile is tweaked to act as an informal resume, similar to LinkedIn. The final part of KickStart is the University page, which is a bit like a Facebook "network" pages.
While Yahoo KickStart is currently a concept and may or may not see the light of day, it highlights Yahoo's ongoing efforts to gain some traction in the hot social networking space, something they failed to achieve with their Yahoo 360 social networking product.