Your Inbox is Getting Smarter and More Social

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