To our disappointment, the YPN was launched as beta for only 2000 sites. It is possible to ask for an invitation, but, I believe the odds are not in favor of a small blogger and , of course not automatic. Personally, I believe that two possible scenarios lead to Yahoo's low scale release of their new network:
The first, Yahoo felt that the market is expecting this product for a while and provided something. Yahoo was probably afraid to miss the buzz around it or to loose the public sympathy and came to the conclusion that it is better to come out with a limited scale product than nothing at all.
The second scenario is slightly more sophisticated. While the all purpose of this long anticipated product was to give small publisher another option; Currently, the situation is that mostly a handful of extremely influential mega bloggers have access to the new network and the average, less sophisticated, bloggers are out. As expected, these mega bloggers receive good customer support and usually provide good PR for Yahoo. Only time will tell if it is publicity stunt, good service due to the small amount of clients, or simply a good product. The simple people will have to wait until the service reaches the masses to learn how the new network really is.