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

I understand that some Yahoo! Mail users may be experiencing some slowness with Yahoo Mail recently. The issue is occurring due to a conflict between Yahoo! Mail and various Symantec (Norton) products including anti-virus/security software. Our engineering team has isolated the issue and is rolling out a fix as I write this blog entry.

In the meantime, if you are currently experiencing an issue with slowness, and have Symantec (Norton) products installed I can suggest disabling your Symantec software while you access Yahoo! Mail to resolve the issue. (Of course, I would not suggest permanently disabling your Symantec software, just do so while checking mail.) If you have to download any e-mail attachments, you can be safe in the knowledge that Yahoo! Mail scans attachments for any viruses before downloading.

The fix is rolling out now and will reach all of our users over the next couple of days.

Andrew – Yahoo Mail Team.

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On top of the new contacts filter we introduced last week, we’ve been hard at work building new social and interactive features within Yahoo! Mail. As you might recall, we first started introducing these features back in December, and based on your feedback have continued to make enhancements throughout the year. Now we’re excited to share the latest social features coming to your Inbox, all focused on giving you a better email experience and making it even easier to keep in touch with those who matter most. Some highlights:

• Updates, Updates, Updates! You told us that you really like Yahoo! Updates, so we’ve added even more of your favorite sites. For example, when you update your Twitter (commonly known as ‘Tweets’) or write an answer on Yahoo! Answers, people you choose to share this with get updated. You also stay in the loop when others do the same. Of course, you can control which updates you share with folks by going to your Yahoo! Profile and selecting ‘manage my updates‘

  My personal favorite: now when you send an email to someone, you can see their latest Updates right on your Message Sent confirmation page.



• What’s The Status? The new Yahoo! status message located right at the top of the What’s New’ page of your Yahoo! Mail is an easy way to keep friends and family in the know with what you are doing, feeling, or thinking about. Yep, this is the same status message that appears on your Yahoo! Profile. We have just made it readily available for updating right in your Inbox. And if you are running out of things to say (as if that is ever possible) you can select from a list of handy, sometimes zany suggestions (what we call ‘status-o-matique’). Just click on the inconspicuous ‘exclamation mark’ located in the status message box. :-)

  And stay tuned, you will start to see your friends’ status messages show up in additional places across Yahoo! as we incorporate Yahoo! Updates into more Yahoo! sites.



• News in Mail: Better than ever! We heard you loud and clear. You missed the tabbed format of news, so we’ve brought it back. To make it more interesting, we added a new category – Yahoo! Buzz – so you can see what current events people find most remarkable and have recently ‘buzzed’ up. For added good measure, some of you told us that you’d prefer to see the News above the Updates section. Now you can! At the bottom of your Updates section, simply click on the ‘More Actions’ menu and choose ‘Move Updates below Today section’. The News will then always appear above Updates when you log in.

These features are available for both Classic and new Yahoo! Mail users in the US and Australia starting today. If you already have created a Yahoo! Profile, you will automatically see the new features the next time you login to Yahoo! Mail. If you haven’t, simply click on profiles.yahoo.com, quickly create a profile, and presto, you will see these features in your inbox. And for those in other countries, stay tuned, as we’ll roll out these features to many of you shortly.

Of course, these features are best seen in action, and that’s why we reached out to a Yahoo! Mail user named Grady who will give you the scoop on all the new stuff. Take it away, Grady…

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At Yahoo Mail, we have a lot in store for 2009. We’ve been working hard building new social features as well as adding functionality to make it easier to find the email and information that matters to you most. On top of offering you a really fast webmail with Unlimited Storage, we wanted your Inbox to understand who you really care about, so you can get the important things done quickly.

These new features will reach your Inbox soon (this summer), but before they do, I wanted to give you a sneak preview of what to expect.

A New Welcome Page
The smarter Inbox experience features a new look to the Yahoo! Mail Welcome Page. As part of the new design we will surface the messages of the people you care about most directly on the Welcome Page.

Updates from Your Close Contacts
You will also notice that we will help you see what your friends and family are up to on other Web sites. You’ll get updates on what they share on the Internet as well as sharing your activity with them from the places you regularly visit such as YouTube, Blogger, Yelp, Picasa, and more. For example if your best mate shares new photos on Flickr or a video on YouTube, you’ll be informed about it on your Yahoo! Mail welcome page.
For obvious privacy reason, everyone will have the hability to manage who is seeing what.

Filtering of Your Important Email
If you get a lot of mail, sometimes you just want a quick way to see the messages that are important to you. With the smarter Inbox you will be able to filter your Inbox (or any folder for that matter) to see just the messages from people in your Addressbook or just your connections.

Check out this video tour that shows you it all in action:

Wait a sec’ – I’m not sure that I want that
These changes will not be turned on by default. But if want to try the new features out and you don’t find these changes to your liking you can turn the features off by editing your Mail Options to disable the social feature.

How do I get it?
We will be adding these features to both Yahoo! Mail Classic and the new Yahoo! Mail version in the UK soon. If you think it sounds pretty cool and you would like to get these great new features in your Yahoo! Mail account, you only need to quickly create your Yahoo! profile and you will automatically get the update. Once it’s done you can invite your most closest contacts to connect with you.

Happy emailing!
Andrew & Gregory Talon – Yahoo! Mail Team

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It seems like only yesterday when we first introduced applications in Yahoo! Mail. Well, starting today, we’re launching a handful of new and VERY cool apps in Yahoo! Mail — all focused on enabling you to do more, share more and save time in Mail.

Applications from PayPal, Zumo Drive, Picnik, OtherInbox and Photobucket cover the gamut on common tasks you handle online, from transferring money to photosharing to sending large files. We’ve reduced the number of times you have to visit multiple destinations on the Web to get things done. For example, the Zumo Drive application provides storage you can access right from inside your mailbox, giving users the ability to send large files as well as share and collaborate on documents and attachments right from their inbox. (But I digress, we’ll go into more detail on this new app and a few others in a second.)

If you already have access to the applications we launched in December, you’ll notice several of the apps the next time you log in, located along the left side of your inbox. If you haven’t already signed up to use the new applications, click here: http://overview.mail.yahoo.com/applications. The new applications are free and available to all US users of the new Yahoo! Mail. For those outside of the US, stay tuned as we will begin rolling out to select markets later this summer.

So without further ado, here is more in-depth look at some of the new apps available on Yahoo! Mail. And for those interested in a demo, check out this video where yours truly walks you through “A Day in the Life of a Yahoo! Mail app.”

Edit Photos by Picnik: This app allows you to crop, touch up, add effects and more to any of the photos that you have in your inbox or online. After you edit them you can email them to friends, save them to your computer, or post to Websites like Flickr and Picasa.

My Photos by Xoopit has continued improving their Mail experience; this app lets you organize and share all the photos in your Inbox from within one view, and they’ve added some features to let you upload new photos and shuffle amongst the treasures buried in your Unlimited Storage mailbox.

PayPal let’s you request and send money to almost anyone around the world right from Yahoo! Mail.

Share It by Zumo Drive allows you to send and share large attachments (up to 100MB) with your friends and family. With Share It, you can share large files like videos, photos, and even entire folders, and the recipients can collaborate and edit the documents with you.

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These days many of you are engaged in an epic battle… separating the important emails from everything else. You get a lot of emails, some good (from friends, family, even favorite interests that you’ve added to your Address Book), and a lot of not-so-important emails (special offers, newsletters, emails you rarely read). All this has made your Inbox more work than fun. Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply snap your fingers and poof! – your Inbox magically transformed to only show the important emails?

Well, we’re not magicians on the Mail team but we are rolling out a new feature that lets you filter your Inbox (or any folder) to just show the emails from senders you’ve added to your Address Book – with just the simple click of a button! It is a crazy easy way to let the “good guys” (important emails) win! Let me show you how it works.

Step 1: Go to your Inbox or any folder. Above the list of emails, you’ll see links to View from All, Contacts, or Connections.

Click on Contacts:

Like magic, your Inbox (or any folder) transforms to only show emails from Contacts you’ve currently added to your Address Book! No work required (who says all things good in life have to be difficult)? Now you can easily see just the emails from your friends, family, and favorite interests (I love U2 and added them to my Address Book) right up front, minus the noise and clutter. Of course, you can always create filters if you want even more control.

Please check it out and let us what you think! Thank you very much for continuing to use Yahoo! Mail.

PS: This feature will roll out in the next few weeks to both Classic and the new Yahoo! Mail users who have the Smarter Inbox features enabled. To get these new features, first create a Profile at profiles.yahoo.com and then log back into Yahoo! Mail. Only users in the US and Australia can get it now, but users from many more countries will be eligible soon.

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