Our goal is to make Yahoo! Mail the smartest communication tool on the web. Since our conversations often start while sharing what we do or like, Yahoo! Mail now allows you to share Updates about the things you do on the Web, with the people that you care about the most.
How do you share the things you do on your favourite sites – tweeting on Twitter, posting a video on Youtube, listening to music on Lastfm or uploading photos to Flickr – with your friends and family? You’ll see, it’s pretty simple.
1. Sharing Updates from Yahoo! sites (Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Buzz, Flickr, etc.)
You don’t have to do anything to share your Updates on Yahoo! sites.
Here is an example of an Update coming from a Yahoo! site: Adding a picture on Flickr
Flickr is one of the world’s largest online photo sharing communities where people share their photos and personal video clips with friends, family and the world. I recently added a new picture to my Flickr account, and now Yahoo! posts a notification to my Yahoo! Profile and to the “What’s New” page of my contacts in Yahoo! Mail.
Here is what my account looks like after posting to Flickr
Here is what my connections see on their “What’s New” page.
2. Sharing Updates from other popular websites
Everyone has their own list of favourite sites. That’s why we offer you the ability to share your Updates from sites like YouTube, Twitter, Vimeo and many more with your friends using Yahoo! Mail. To start sharing, you need to link your favourite sites to your Yahoo! Account by going to the “Share More” section of your Yahoo! Profile.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/share_more/
From here you can select the sites you want to share Updates from and add them by providing your related user name.
Here’s an example of an Update from a non Yahoo! site: Publishing or adding a video to your favourites on YouTube.
When I’m not at my day job, I’m also a musician. So I have my own channel on YouTube where I publish my music videos or discover what’s upcoming like this single titled « Take It In » from Hot Chip (a Grammy-nominated British electropop band). So I added YouTube in the “Share More” section of my Yahoo! Profile. Now I can easily share all my discoveries with my connections.
Here is what my profile page looks like with the YouTube update
Here’s what it looks like on my connection’s ‘What’s New’ page
The list of sites that you can connect with your Yahoo! account:
You’ll find the complete list of sites that you can connect with your Yahoo! account on the “Share More” section of your profile. We are always updating the list of sites.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/share_more/
If you’re not ready to start sharing your Updates
Your privacy is very important to us. So if you’re not interested in sharing Updates with your connections, you have the ability to turn them off. Just click ‘Options’ at the top right of your Inbox and select ‘Mail Options’. Then uncheck the box ‘Enable Connection-related features’ and click ‘Save Changes’.
Gregory Talon
Product Manager Yahoo! Mail