Wouldn’t it be great if you had an address book that updated itself — that always had the most up-to-date information for the people who matter most to you?

In the latest version of Yahoo! Contacts – in addition to making it simple to import email addresses from your Facebook friends – we have rolled out an “auto-updating” Address Book! Let’s take that friend who moved away and didn’t share her new phone number. In the old days, you might have lost touch with her. But now, when your friend updates her Yahoo! contact details and chooses to share the information, your Yahoo! Contacts gets automatically updated. Here’s how it works:

Let’s turn my example around, and make sure your friends always have the most up-to-date information for you! Just go to Yahoo! Contacts and click on the Share my info link under the Popular Tools.

Clicking on the link will show all the contact information that Yahoo! has for you.

If everything looks good, just click Start Sharing and this information will be shared with all the people you’ve chosen to share it with (such as your Connections). If you are like me, much of the information shown will likely come from when you registered for Yahoo! In other words – it’s ancient! To update your information just click Edit to go to your account information page. From there you can easily update your contact details and choose who you want to share it with. Remember, you have complete control over what you share.

Now here’s the fun part: your friends get your latest contact information without having to lift a finger! First, they will get a Yahoo! Update notifying them that your contact information has changed. Next, when they go to look you up in Yahoo! Contacts, they will see the contact information you gave them access to and the last time it was updated (don’t worry, none of the information you have for them will ever be over-written). Here’s what you’re friends will see:

Hopefully this feature helps you never lose touch with the people who matter most.

In addition to importing your contacts from sites like Gmail and Windows Live Hotmail, starting this week you can now easily add your Facebook friends’ email addresses to your Yahoo! Contacts list. This will make it easy to communicate and share with the people you care about – wherever you are in Yahoo!. So when you are on Yahoo! Sports and you want to email your old high school buddy that great article on the Winter Olympics, his email address is just a click away. Or maybe you want to forward your cousin your airplane reservations on Yahoo! Mail, but you’ve never emailed him before. Now you can type the first few letters of his name in Yahoo! Mail and – presto! – his email address from his Facebook profile will appear in your email.

Importing from Facebook is super simple. To get started, just go to the Import Contacts landing page and select Facebook (and as you can tell from screenshot below, it is also easy to import email addresses from other services).

Next, enter your Facebook username and password in the Facebook login window that opens.

After you click login, we will authorize your account and begin importing, which may take a minute or two depending on your Internet speed and how many Facebook friends you have.

That’s it! Your Facebook friends’ email addresses will be added to your Yahoo! Contacts. You will see which contacts and email addresses were imported and who you already had contact information for (don’t worry, we won’t create duplicates).

We hope this feature makes it even easier to stay connected to the people who matter the most to you. And this is just one of the first steps you’ll see us take to help people interact with Facebook users all across Yahoo!. Stay tuned here and elsewhere on Yahoo! for more ways to use Facebook and Yahoo! together.

• 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…

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.

Let’s face it – messages from some people are more important than those from others. We would all rather read an email from our best friend than view a “special offer” from a Web site we bought something on years ago. New features coming to both our Classic and New versions of Yahoo ! Mail will make it easier to give important people VIP treatment in your inbox.

Of course, not everyone can be a VIP, so you have to invite people to become a connection (what we call VIPs). To do this, you send them an invitation to connect (they don’t even have to be using Yahoo ! Mail) and once they accept, new features are unlocked that only connections get. For starters, we make it super simple to see messages from connections right when you sign in on the Welcome Page and right in your inbox.

We also help you see what they are up to on other Web sites, like Yahoo ! TV, Travel and Music. For example, when they review the latest episode of “House,” review their favorite beach in Kauai , or rate the newest song from U2, you get automatically updated. We are calling this next generation of Yahoo ! Mail the “smarter inbox.” This video that shows the new stuff in action:

Connections will get even more VIP treatment in your inbox in the coming months. For example, we will allow you to share enormous files over email with your connections, and we’ll remind you when their birthdays are coming up. Those are just a few things… more on those features later. Connections will also get benefits across all Yahoo!, not just in Yahoo ! Mail.

These features in Yahoo ! Mail are now rolling out to users in Australia and some in the US – but coming everywhere soon. Users with Yahoo! profile will get access first, so create a profile at profile.yahoo.com to get to the head of the line!

Rick Pal
Yahoo! Mail Product Guy