Yahoo! Mail Blog
The latest scoop on Yahoo! Mail product updates, new releases, bug fixes,

By now you have definitely heard Monday’s announcement about the release of the all-new Yahoo! Mail. As you might imagine, the day something like that happens is not only a big deal for all the folks (lots!) who have spent time working on it (anywhere from weeks to YEARS), but it is also a really big deal for everyone here. To commemorate such a momentous occasion we were treated to the biggest Liam ever. No, not the obese Liam we “rolled” out when storage limits were eliminated, but a giant inflatable Liam! Combine that with inflatable couches and it was a purple extravaganza.

Thanks to the photo trickery of Court Mast our founders, Jerry Yang and David Filo, appear almost as large as the giant balloon.

Despite how it may have looked to some, giant Liam did not actually pull a ‘Stay-Puft‘, and stomp anyone. Meanwhile others enjoyed the pseudo comfort of inflated couches and chairs.

I’ll try to be back soon with another post offering some tips and info based on some of the questions that we have been getting. In the meantime I’ll address the two that seem to be among the most common.

Q) How can you tell if you are out of Beta?
A) If you are still unsure about whether or not you are actually out of beta, just take a look at the Yahoo! Mail logo in the upper left corner of the browser window. If the “BETA” is gone, you have already been migrated over.

Q) If I’m still in Beta, when will I be switched?
A) We are in the process of rolling it out to everyone, but because of number of users it could be anywhere from this week, to as long as six weeks. We’re trying to get it done as quickly as possible, but there are a lot of servers so please be patient.

Ryan K
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

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It’s official…the beta is over! As is being reported on Yodel! the all-new Yahoo! Mail rollout has begun. Many of you have already been switched from the beta, but others may have to wait a week or so for the rollout to hit their respective servers. Below is the post that John Kremer, VP of Yahoo! Mail, published earlier this morning on the corporate blog.

If you are here for the first time, this is the Yahoo! Mail blog, the home for all things relating to Yahoo! Mail. Whether you are looking for news on feature changes, bug fixes, interviews with Yahoos working on Mail, tips from power users, tutorials, a glimpse behind the walls here at Yahoo!, or what have you, this is where you can go to find it. Subscribe to the RSS Feed, or even better you can add it to MyYahoo by clicking and you can see updates there!

Ryan K
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

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Introducing the all-new Yahoo! Mail

My kids, like most, love text messaging. But while their nimble fingers can easily navigate cell phone keypads at lightening speeds, I definitely prefer a full keyboard, and am much more inclined to use email than text messaging.

So I’m doubly excited to announce the launch of the all-new Yahoo! Mail today. Not only are we launching a brand new version of one of the most popular Web mail services in the world, but we’re unveiling a solution to my texting woes, and giving people around the world more ways to connect. With the new Yahoo! Mail, people can send and receive free text messages in their email to and from any mobile phone number in participating markets including the US, Canada, India and the Philippines.

It’s sure to come in handy for people like me who want to keep in touch with text-crazy friends and family. From my Yahoo! Mail window (and using my comfortably full-sized keyboard), I can type a note to my son, letting him know I’m on my way to his soccer practice, and send it straight to his phone. And he can send a text message right back to my email, letting me know where to meet him. The intuitive, chat-like interface makes it super easy, even if you’re a novice at text messaging.

We already have great integrated instant messaging features in Yahoo! Mail, so adding text messaging was a natural next step. It’s an increasingly popular way to keep in touch, especially among younger users. In fact, 69% of US mobile phone users between the ages of 18-39 use text messaging (Harris Interactive, June 2006), and half of Americans age 18-25 say they sent or received a text message over the phone in the past day (Pew Research Center, January 2007).

Today’s news doesn’t stop at text messaging — the all-new Yahoo! Mail also lets users send and receive instant messages in real-time to their friends who are logged into Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger or Windows Live Messenger, without ever leaving the e-mail experience. You can even switch between emailing, instant messaging, and text messaging as your friends come online or go mobile. We want our users to be able to choose how they communicate with their friends and family, in the most appropriate method for the moment. By adding these new types of real-time communication into Yahoo! Mail, we’re laying the foundation for an even more social experience for our users.

For those of you who love the original Yahoo! Mail interface — not to worry. We’re keeping Yahoo! Mail Classic as well. Our goal is to provide the best email experience for everyone, whether that be familiar and comfortable or new and shiny.

To check out the brand new Yahoo! Mail, go on over to http://mail.yahoo.com. Enjoy!

John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail

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If you use email, and judging by the fact that you are reading a Mail blog there is a good chance you do, you have no doubt had run-ins with the dreaded Spammers. If you don’t know, spammers are either trying to bury you in some sort of marketing/sales avalanche, or could be trying to trick you into providing personal or account information (that they would then use for nefarious goals). Either way it is good to learn ways that can help to “knock-out” Spam, and below are some useful tips from our team.

• Report spam using the Spam Button
  • The fastest and best way to report suspected Spam is to highlight the message and click the Spam button within Yahoo! Mail. We always strive to stamp out new tactics as quickly as we can. Clicking this button immediately alerts our systems and engineers to a new spam tactic, so the more reliably you click the button, the better we can tune SpamGuard to ensure you don’t get messages like this again.
• Give out your email address sparingly
  • You should only share your email address with individuals and companies you trust.
• Don’t post your email address in public places (message boards, chat rooms)
  • Spammers mine for email addresses all over the internet, so if you post your email address publicly there is a good chance they will find it.
  • If you absolutely must share your email address you may want to try replacing @ with <at>. Spammers can still find the address, but at least it won’t be as easy for their scraping tools. For example, if your address were jethro.jones@yahoo.com, you might post it as jethro.jones<at>yahoo.com. This helps block scripts that are scanning for the “@” symbol.
• Customize your spam settings
  • Check your SpamGuard setting, enable image blocking
• Use a Disposable Email Address for shopping
  • Avoid using your primary email address on various shopping sites. One solution is Yahoo! AddressGuard which allows you to create disposable email addresses. It is attached to your Yahoo! Mail account, but if Spam starts rolling in you can delete it (without impacting your primary address) and simply create a new one.
  • AddressGuard is available for Mail Plus subscribers, but comes bundled with SpamGuard Plus (featuring some Bayesian technology I can’t even hope to explain).
• Read the fine print
  • Be mindful of what you opt-in and out of when asked to receive other offers and information.

Now if one of those nefariously intended spam messages still gets through, a common tactic used to obtain your account information is to direct you to a fake login page. If you are ever directed to login to a Yahoo! sign in page there is a great feature that can help you make sure that you are logging into a legit one (whether Mail or any other Yahoo! website), and it is called Yahoo! Sign-In Seal.

When signing into a Yahoo! page you may have seen the folded down corner encouraging you to Prevent Password Theft. Clicking there gives you the option to create a short text phrase, or personalized image, that will appear anytime you login to a Yahoo! web page from that machine. That means that if you click on a link and land on a Yahoo! sign-in page without your designated “seal” it probably isn’t authentic.

Once again, this applies only to computers you have completed the Yahoo! Sign-In Seal process on. So if you set-up a seal on your home computer, you will have to repeat the process on your work computer. On my home computer I have the contemplative picture you saw in my introductory blog post, but as you can see to the left I have used a picture of me at a baseball game for my work computer (first comment that correctly identifies which MLB stadium gets a prize!).

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In my last post, I think I suggested that summer had finally arrived. I think I need to re-examine that suggestion, as we’ve been having what I would consider very autumnal weather this week.

Looking at the weather module on my Mail homepage it looks like it’s shaping up to be a nice weekend – at least in London where I live. Which brings up a question that my colleague Tim and I are arguing (well sort of) about: What’s considered hot.

I would argue that with the exception of April, and a smattering of days, this summer has been down right chilly. While I’m always putting on an extra jumper, Tim is always complaining about how hot it is and walking around in t-shirts and flip-flops.

I’d like to get your opinion and test out a new polling feature for the blog… Hot or Not? (c’mon, I mean the temperature) Vote below.

Have a great bank holiday weekend.
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Beta Team

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There is a decent chance that many of you reading this found your way here from a link on the popular Yahoo! Experts Group known as “Y-Mail: Yahoo! Mail Users Group.” But just in case you didn’t, I feel compelled to return the favor (and maybe some of the traffic).

Billed as the “official” group for Yahoo! Mail, the “Y-Mail Group” (as it is often referred to) is moderated by 5 very dedicated users, and boasts enrollment of more than 3,000. With new discussions starting all the time you will always find some fresh conversations, and with so many experienced Mail users you are bound to find some great user tips.

Have you ever wondered if there was a way to use Yahoo! Mail Beta from home, but use the original version at work, and assumed you would have to constantly hassle with switching back and forth? Someone else already has and posted some advice. Maybe you want to designate Yahoo! Mail as your default email client within Windows. One of the users found the Yahoo! FAQ page with the detailed instructions and posted the link.

Just don’t forget, the Y-Mail Group is still a user group, and is run entirely by Yahoo! users. With that being the case the opinions expressed there are not necessarily the opinions of Yahoo!

Ryan Knight
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

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As promised, I’m back with a quick refresher on a great resource for both beginner and experienced Yahoo! Mail users…Tutorials. Yahoo! offers these tutorials for all sorts of topics (Messenger for the Web, MyYahoo beta, etc.) but what matters here is that there is a lot of great information for Yahoo! Mail users. Whether you are using Yahoo! Mail Beta, or the original Yahoo! Mail, there are tutorials for you.

If you take a look at the upper right corner of your Yahoo! Mail you should see a link to Help (my example shows Yahoo! Mail Beta, but there is also a link in the original Yahoo! Mail). Activiting that link will reveal a drop-down menu with a link to Tutorials.

Depending on which Yahoo! product you are in, you will be taken to a specific Tutorials page. Since I’m showing the link in the beta, this example shows the tutorials associated with Yahoo! Mail Beta, but if you are using the original Yahoo! Mail you can see the tutorials here.

In reviewing some of the comments left for me last week, it seems that many of you still have questions about the Messenger for Mail feature. As luck would have it there are tutorials that focus on exactly that! Need to know how to manage your login status? How about changing from Speech Bubbles to Standard Text? Tutorials will provide steps and screenshots to walk you through the process. Also be sure to click on one of the User Surveys and let the Tutorials team know your thoughts!

Ryan Knight
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

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First off, thanks to everyone who took the time to post a comment on my “intro” post from last week. It is exciting to know that there is a passionate audience out there, and that if there is one thing I won’t have to worry about it is getting readers to express their feelings about a subject. :)

I’m still researching some of the questions that were raised over the weekend, but in the meantime I wanted to share one of the fun things that you may have missed over the past few months. This Bix contest that was featured on our sister blog in the UK recently.

You’ve probably seen different versions of Liam all around Yahoo! Mail Beta. It looks like someone decided it was time to vote on which Liam is everyone’s “favourite” (note the Queen’s English). You won’t be able to add any new entries to the contest, but it is is going until September 7th, so be sure to cast ye votes soon!

Go to this contest on BixRyan Knight
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

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Many of you may have been wondering if this blog was still alive. I can’t say I blame you, if you did, given that the last post was months ago, but have no fear this IS a blog and I’m going to re-establish it as THE place to go for all things Yahoo! Mail.

But first I need to clarify a little. In an effort to totally dazzle you with misdirection, we thought it would be fun to try and replace the awesome work done, over the last year, by Ryan Kennedy with another Ryan…me. My name is Ryan Knight, and I’m the new Community Manager for Mail. That’s right, Yahoo! realized that the original Ryan had enough to do keeping up on his engineering responsibilities, and decided it was time to bring in another Ryan who could spend more time rustling up news for you. Don’t worry, Mr. Kennedy is still a Yahoo, and sends his best.

What that means to you is that this blog will be active again, and will be posted to on a regular basis. It will also cover all forms of mail, so even if you aren’t using Yahoo! Mail Beta, there will be stuff here for you too. Whether you are looking for news on feature changes, bug fixes, interviews with Yahoos working on Mail, tips from power users, tutorials, a glimpse behind the walls here at Yahoo!, or what have you, this is where you can go to find it.

I’m also excited to let you all know that there are some feature changes for the blog. You can find most of them in the sidebar to the —>. As you may have noticed we’ve added Categories, a Blogroll, a Recent Readers section (courtesy of our friends at MyBlogLog), and last but not least…enabling Comments. So have a look around, let us know what you think, and be sure to check back often.

Ryan Knight
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

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Sun, sand and surf. How on earth are you going to check your email when on holiday? I figure you probably fall into one of 2 categories:

You are either:

1. No work, no computers, no technology. You want to get away from it all and not be contactable. But if you’re going to be off globe-trotting around the world or just lazing on the beach for two to three weeks, why don’t you let your friends and family know that you’re away. Just use the “Holiday Response” in the Options menu of Yahoo Mail and respond to everyone when you get back. And now that you have unlimited storage, you don’t have to worry about pesky limits again.

or…

2. An email junkie. You’re so connected that you check your mail everyday whether from your laptop, your friends’ laptop, a cyber-café or the hotel lobby. You just can’t go a day without checking your email.

Mail just got mobile
If you fall into the #2 camp, why don’t you take your mail with you? Use your mobile phone to check your mail. It’s easy and free (of course your provider might charge you for internet access). You can check it out if you have a WAP compatible mobile phone. Just type http://uk.m.yahoo.com into your phone’s browser and you can get your email, contacts, and even Yahoo! Messenger.

For a more enhanced experience, why not try Yahoo! Go. It’s a feature rich java application that makes it easy and fun to access the Internet. If you’re a true email junkie, then Yahoo! Go is for you. Check it out. All your emails are there when you want them. Email is automatically pushed to your phone and syncs with your Web account (for example: delete a message on your mobile and it is reflected on Webmail).

Believe it or not, I’m a #1 kind of guy.
Have a great summer!!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Beta Team

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Reading through the feedback that you send us here on the Yahoo! Mail Beta team, I see a lot of comments/questions about how best to send photos through Mail. One suggestion that I can offer is – in fact – not to send Photos through mail. A much easier, robust and fun alternative exists, and it’s right at your fingertips. It’s called Flickr – the award winning photos sharing site – that just happens to be another great Yahoo! site.

So how does it work?
Simple really. Just log into Flickr with your Yahoo! ID. (If it’s your first time logging into Flickr you get to choose a screen name which can be different from your user ID). At this point you can upload a photo, or if you have a whole bunch of photos you can use one of the Flickr uploading tools. When you’re finished uploading, you can change the title, enter a description or add a tag.

Once you’re finished uploading, find the link on the bottom-right side of the page called “Send to a friend”. Enter an email address, or two, or three. Write a witty message. Then click send. That’s all there is to it.

So why is this good?
This way is an excellent way to share photos for so many reasons it’s going to be hard to list them all here. But what the heck, I’ll give it a go:

• Your photos aren’t constrained by size
• You don’t overstuff your friends’ inboxes (hey, we know not everyone uses Yahoo! with unlimited storage – but you’ll change that right? ;-) )
• One link gives them access to all of your photos
• Create groups in Flickr for your friends and family and when you upload new pictures they can be alerted right away.
• Your friends and family can leave comments and everyone can see the comments (sure beats reply-all)
• You can place your photos on a map (how addictive is that?!?!)
• And so much more

A fun way to get started with Flickr is by just exploring. It’s fun, addictive and a great way to share photos with friends, family and a world-wide photo community.

Happy snapping!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Beta Team

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