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.

You can find the Attach Large Files app in the Applications section underneath your folders. (If you don’t see it listed, you can add it to your list by clicking the plus sign.) To get started just click on the ‘Attach Large Files’ app.

After you agree and then click to get started, you can right away begin using the app to attach and send up to 100 Megabyte attachments. It doesn’t have to be just one file, you can upload multiple attachments in a single go. Just keep selecting all the files that you want to attach and when you’re ready, click the ‘Upload and Compose Email’. The app will tell you how much more space you have available. It’s that simple.

Once the files have finished uploading, the Attach Large Files app will open up a new message with the files already attached. The files will be available for downloading for 30 days after you send them, and your upload history is saved so you can resend again if you like. And you don’t have to worry whether or not your recipient’s Inbox can handle these attachments because the attachment is stored over at our app partner drop.io.

It really couldn’t be easier. The only thing to note is for people that like to write emails in ‘Plain Text’. With ‘Attach Large Files’, you have to compose your emails in ‘Rich Text’, but the App will prompt you to change to ‘Rich Text’ if you are not already doing that.

To get started, when you first open Yahoo! Contacts, just click the link to ‘Fix duplicate entries’. (There is also a link in the ‘Tools’ button at the top of your contacts window.)

The tool will scan your contacts list and present you with the duplicate entries that were found. To combine the duplicates into one, just click the button ‘Merge all EXACT’ and then ‘Yes’ to confirm.

OK, so it’s actually two clicks, but it really couldn’t be any easier to clean up your contacts list. If you would rather review each duplicate separately, just click the ‘Next’ button instead. A wizard will guide you through the process of merging each duplicate entry.

If you made a resolution to organize and clean up your address book for 2010 and were dreading doing it, now there is no excuse not to. What may have taken hours will now take just a couple of minutes.

As is usual at this time of year, it’s time to take a look back and see what we’ve been able to accomplish in these short 12 months. Here are the highlights (in no particular order):

• To kick off 2009 we gave you a smarter, more social Mailbox. With the new welcome page “What’s New” in Yahoo! Mail you can now easily find the important mail from those who matter most. In addition you can now get updates from your connections. And from the Inbox you can filter your mail to see just the mail from your contacts or connections.
• We launched Yahoo! Messenger in Classic Mail. It seems like it’s been a part of the Classic Mail forever, but the ability to instantly chat with your friends and family in the classic version of Yahoo! Mail has only been around since the beginning of the year.
• We’ve added fantastic new Apps in Yahoo! Mail to let you be more productive right from your Inbox. (Of course we have to thank our Apps partners who also worked very hard to deliver you these great tools.) Apps like Edit Photos from Picnik let you easily share and edit photos right from within your Inbox. The ‘Attach Large Files’ from ZumoDrive lets you share up to 100MB files. Apps like Pingg and Evite allow you easily manage your social calendar.
• One of our goals is to help you do more with your photos in your Yahoo! Mailbox. We want to make photos an integral part of your Mail experience. Our acquisition of Xoopit will go a long way to make that a reality.
• In order to send all those photos (and other attachment types) we recently launched the ability for you to add attachments up to 25MB to a single email. That’s about 12 photos if your camera takes about 2MB photos. And to help you attach those files, we launched an enhanced attachment feature for the all-new version of Yahoo! Mail. It allows you drag and drop your attachments right into your email. Plus you can scale and rotate your photo attachments.
• We’ve also been working hard behind the scenes to improve the speed of Yahoo! Mail. In the US we have achieved more than a 16% improvement in performance over the year. And, Yahoo! Mail is the fastest Webmail in the UK (based on our tests using 3rd party tools). So, not only have we given you more tools to increase your productivity, we’ve made it even faster to get things done.
• Our friends on the Address book team recently launched the updated Yahoo! Contacts. It goes a long way to unify the Contacts experience across the Yahoo! network and fits seamlessly into the all-new Yahoo! Mail. Plus the new clean-up duplicates tool is a great way to clean up your list of contacts.
• Our ongoing efforts to reduce spam and helping you keep safe in Mail have seen our lowest level of spam in recent history. We told you back at the beginning of the year about some of what the anti-spam team has been working on in the background, and we hope you’re all seeing the continued improvement. Plus we are always committed to keeping you safer online through safety tips on this blog.
• Thanks to our colleagues on the Front Page team you can now preview your Inbox right from the Mail tab on the newly redesigned Yahoo! Homepage.
• Finally, we know that many of you are mobile with your mail. So we have to give a shout out and congratulations to the Mobile Team who just went GA with an updated Mobile mail experience. Just point your mobile browser over to m.yahoo.com/mail to have a look. I definitely give it two thumbs up, way up!

Wow! That’s a lot, and those are just the highlights! Rest assured, we are prepared to work even harder next year. We are aiming to give you a better photo sharing experience, more amazing third party Apps and an enhanced Yahoo! Calendar to name just a few.

So, from all of us on the Yahoo! Mail team, I want to wish you and everyone on your Yahoo! Contacts list a very happy holiday season and all the best for the New Year.

You’ve got questions, I’ve got answers…

What is it?
An extra mail address is a second Yahoo! email address that is linked to your existing Yahoo! Mail account. It’s another email address, just like your primary one, that you can use to send and receive mail from, while using the exact same Inbox you’re used to. You can even make it the default address that you send email from if you want.

Why do I want one?
I can think of a number of things that you could use the extra mail address for. Here’s just a couple:

• Let’s say you’re looking for a new job. If you originally signed up for a mail address like barry_manilow_fan@yahoo.com, you might think twice about putting that at the top of your resume. You can create an extra mail address that is more appropriate for a job search or other business correspondence.
• Maybe you just want to have a second email address. There’s a great deal of convenience in being able to check for new mail without having to login and out of two separate accounts.

Sounds good, how do I get one?
It’s easy to set up and start using. From your Yahoo! Mail account click ‘Options’ then ‘Mail Options’ in the upper-right part of your Mailbox. From the Mail Options screen click ‘Accounts’ then ‘Add or edit an Account’. At the bottom of the new window click the ‘Get Started’ link under ‘Extra Mail Address’.

That sounds easy, but I’m still not sure. What else?

• You can easily send from this extra email address by selecting it from the pull-down menu when you compose a new message.
• You can sign in to your Yahoo! Mail (or anywhere else on Yahoo!) using the extra email address with your existing password.
• You can even make the extra email address the default for sending new mail. Just set it as the default in the ‘Mail Accounts’ section of Mail Options.

I really hope you try out this feature. If you get stuck, or want to find out more information about extra email addresses in Yahoo! Mail, take a look at our help pages.

Of course, as a proud member of the great team at Yahoo! Mail, I think nowhere is the spirit of YOU more personified than with Yahoo! Mail. With our new Mail we are helping you connect, share and do more than ever before right from within your Inbox. Our most recent improvements help you:

• see emails and updates from the people that matter most
• attach and upload files and photos of up to 25MB
• do more with useful apps (like editing photos, sending invitations) right from your Inbox

And we will continue to innovate and enhance Yahoo! Mail to make sure that we provide you with the best Mail experience on the Internet.

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Evite is coming together with Yahoo! Mail to make getting friends together even easier! With the Evite application, Yahoo! Mail users can send friends an invitation without having to leave their Yahoo! Inbox.

Yahoo! Mail users will get access to Evite’s exclusive invitation designs, perfect for any and every type of event. Not only is an Evite invitation more festive than just sending an email, users can manage all their friends’ RSVPs in one place without having to juggle dozens of emails.

The Evite application also helps users keep track of all their Evite events with a simple upcoming events tracker right in the application, as well as adding Evite events to their Yahoo! Calendar. Enjoy!

- Gabe Huerta, Evite

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Today, we’re pleased to announce that people using Yahoo! Mail now have the ability to attach up to 100MB of files to each email using drop.io’s new Attach Large Files application. Best of all, it only takes one click and there is no sign-up or registration!

Drop.io is the simplest way to privately share exactly what you want with whom you want online – all in real-time and across all platforms (web, mobile and more).
Our application makes it easier to share groups of photos, documents, movies and more, by combining the power of drop.io as a robust media & file sharing platform with Yahoo! Mail, one of the world’s most popular email services.

People can access the Attach Large Files app from the Applications Box in the lower left-hand corner of their Yahoo! Mail inbox and using the app is simple:

1. Click “Attach Large Files” — this brings you to the drop.io welcome page
2. Next click “Select Files” — add as many files from your computer as you want up to 100MB. You’ll recognize drop.io’s distinct upload interface that displays the queued files, their file size and allows you to cancel any of them either before or during upload.
3. Next click “Upload and Compose Email” – users are brought to a new email, populated with thumbnails and links to view and download the attachments.

When your recipient opens the email, they have the option to click to view and download individual files, or the whole group.

The application allows people to save previously sent groups of attached files that can later be viewed or resent. It also integrates several useful drop.io functions like voicemail and conference calling.

The Attach Large Files app was built entirely on drop.io’s robust and open API. We are excited to see our API continue to be used as a springboard for other platforms to leverage drop.io’s powerful, real-time file sharing, collaboration and conversion engine to help power content sharing in the context of communication platforms.

Please check out our video screencast for more details about how the app works.

We hope you enjoy sharing more files using Yahoo! Mail and the drop.io app.

-Scott Schwanbeck, drop.io

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Please excuse us while we celebrate a little; we’re a company that’s all about parties and entertaining, so it’s one of the things we do best. Today marks an important and exciting opportunity for us here at pingg. Today’s celebration is all about appreciation for our friends at Yahoo! Mail, who are rolling out the pingg Invitations app, allowing people to plan events with pingg right within Yahoo! Mail. Online invitations are incredibly popular, with at least five million events planned online each month, by our estimate. By all accounts an impressive figure, online invitations will only continue to grow as people look for stylish, eco-conscious and economical ways to entertain and communicate.

Since our launch in March of 2008, we’ve been offering a more stylish way to send and manage online invitations. Our gallery features beautiful, exclusive images contributed by renowned artists and style icons such as Martha Stewart, celebrity, fashion & nightlife photographer Patrick McMullan and groundbreaking graffiti artist Erni Vales, as well as up-and-coming illustrators and painters like Jessica Gonacha and Ashley Mills. We’ve always focused on design and aesthetics for modern hosts who are excited by the idea of being able to send stylish invitations online.

To find the pingg Invitations app, simply log into Yahoo! Mail and click the pingg Invitations icon in your new Applications Box on the left-side column. Once you get started, here are some of the specific activities you select from – all around making the invite process that much easier:

• Choose from pingg’s complete gallery of images, including artwork from our unique Designer Series, to create, personalize and send invitations right from your Yahoo! Mail inbox
• Monitor RSVPs, guest comments and status updates for all of your events in once place via the comprehensive dashboard
• Modify your invitation or send e-mail messages to individual guests with one click; set up reminder messages and thank you notes
• Get tips and other great content from friends of pingg like Martha Stewart, giggle.com, Notes On A Party and Sugar Network to help you entertain in style
• Grab contacts from your Yahoo! Mail address book
• Add events to your Yahoo! Calendar from within the app
• Add a map from Yahoo! Maps

Here is a look at how the pingg Invitations app will work for folks on Yahoo! Mail. We think it’s quite a nice fit.

Over the past year and a half as we’ve established our place within the entertaining industry, we’ve found countless reasons to celebrate and working with Yahoo! Mail is another great excuse to get the champagne flowing again. We are truly flattered to be working with a company who clearly sees the merit in collaborating with smaller, innovative start-ups like ourselves to provide their audience with the best tools for the things they love to do online.

So whether it’s for a milestone birthday, a Tuesday night dinner party, a client-appreciation event or an exotic destination wedding, we invite you to celebrate with pingg, too. That’s certainly what we’ll be doing; that and making sure your invitations are always well sent.

-Lorien Gabel, Co-Founder & CEO, pingg

One of the additions to our app family is pingg Invitations. With pingg Invitations, you can choose from a wide selection of invites featuring a range of designs, including ones created by well known artists and photographers. Even more impressive are the super slick host management (party invite) tools and integration with Yahoo! Maps. If you’re a hostzilla like me, you want to find just the right invitation design for your occasion and keep your eye on invitees that check your invite, but don’t RSVP (party foul). pingg makes it so easy to plan with some serious style!

With the Attach Large Files app, we are once again answering the call of our users to allow sharing of larger files. The folks at drop.io have built this app to allow users to easily upload and share files up to 100MB. They’ve taken collaboration to the next level by adding the ability to comment on files, a number to leave a voicemail for more context and a conference call number if you need to discuss further in real-time. Sometimes asynchronous collaboration is just not enough, right?

Today we are also releasing the Evite app that we demo’ed a couple of weeks ago. Now you can plan events with your friends and family from right within Yahoo! Mail. Start an Evite, make a list of potential partygoers using your Yahoo! Contacts address book and add it to your Calendar.

Finally, we continue to enhance our existing apps by adding features users have been asking for – like the ability to share photo sets in the flickr app. So if you already use apps, go check out the changes!

We are truly excited about what the future holds and we can’t wait to add even more apps for you to choose from! Stay tuned for more apps to further enhance your email experience and make you even more productive within Yahoo! Mail!