Yahoo! Mail Blog » Rick

Keep in touch with those who matter most… all within your Yahoo! Mail inbox

Rick — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:56:16 +0000

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…

Important Emails Always Win in Yahoo! Mail

Rick — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:42:30 +0000

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.

Give friends and family VIP treatment in your Inbox

Rick — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:42:21 +0000

If I could earn a nickel for how many times I’ve heard people say “I get WAY too much email!” I could retire soon. :) I’ve seen studies that show that users get 30 emails a day on average. That’s a lot of email to go through each day!

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