What’s New? – Changes to Your Welcome Page

It seems like only yesterday we launched the smarter and more social features in Yahoo! Mail. With the new welcome page – ‘What’s New’ – you can now easily find the important mail from those who matter most. In addition, you can now get updates from people you’re close to. And from the Inbox and folders, you can filter your mail to see just the mail from your contacts or connections.

I know that for some of you the new smarter and more social features haven’t been turned on yet. So I wanted to let you know that, shortly, these great new features will be added to everyone’s ‘What’s New’ page. So let me take this opportunity to guide you through the upcoming changes.

We are adding two new sections (they are highlighted in red) that will be above the Today section:

• Recent Unread Emails from Contacts (or Connections): This section shows you the most recent emails that you’ve received from the people in your contacts list. You can also change this to show the new emails from the people that you are connected to by clicking the down arrow. If you click on one of the emails listed you will open that email.
• Updates: This section shows you what your connections are doing on the places that they regularly visit. You can get updates from sites like Twitter, Blogger, Yelp, YouTube and many more. You can also share what you are doing by managing your updates. If you would rather see news at the top just click that down arrow to the right and the Updates section will move below the Today section.

From reading your feedback, I know that those who have these features really like them. However, if you would rather turn off these features, you can. Just click the ‘Options’ link at the top right of your Inbox and then ‘Mail Options’. Un-tick the checkbox labeled ‘Enable Connection-related features’ and then ‘Save Changes’. The next time you login to Mail you will only see the Today section.

The changes are rolling out over the next few months to both the Classic and All-New versions of Yahoo! Mail, so you may not get the new ‘What’s New’ page for a little while. If you don’t have it and would like to try it out, just create a profile, and you’ll get the new features.

Happy New Year!