Yesterday we made some big announcements. We launched our first-ever Yahoo! Mail and Messenger Android apps and unveiled a redesigned version of Yahoo! Mail optimized for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Today I wanted to share with you some thoughts from the people who brought these products to life. Check out this latest episode of Yahoo! News Bytes featuring our very own Lee Parry. Enjoy the video!
Jim Hu
Product Marketing Manager
Yahoo! Mail
At Yahoo!, our goal is to help you stay in touch with the people who matter most in your life. Whether it’s on a PC, a smartphone, an iPad, or a TV, we want to bring you a Yahoo! communications experience that you can enjoy on any Internet-connected device. Today, I’m thrilled to share with you two announcements that bring this vision even closer.
The Best Yahoo! Communications Experience — for your Android Phone
First, we’re excited to unveil Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger apps for the Android operating system. These are the first Android applications that Yahoo! has ever released and we couldn’t be happier to be sharing them with you today. You can download them from the Android Market for phones that support Android OS 2.0+, such the popular Motorola Droid, the HTC Incredible and the Google Nexus One.
Yahoo! Mail and Messenger are available as separate streamlined apps, however they offer common features that will give you a better mobile communications experience that’s easy to use and immediately familiar. Both apps let you compose messages with rich text, express yourself through our many Yahoo! emoticons, access Yahoo! Address Book and phone contacts, as well as share photos that you’ve taken on your phone.
The Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger Android apps offer many of the core features that you find in their PC counterparts. In the Yahoo! Mail Android app, you can search for important messages with our Full Search and Smart Folders features and organize messages into the same personal folders you use on the PC. In Messenger you can set your Yahoo! Messenger status message, view the status messages of your buddy list contacts and chat with your MSN/Windows Live Messenger friends. For more details on the Messenger app, click here.
Give them a try today! You can download the Yahoo! Mail and Messenger apps from the Android Market.
For additional information, visit http://mobile.yahoo.com/mail/android.
The new HTML5 mobile Web Mail for iPhone and iPod Touch – A smarter, faster, and richer mobile mail experience
For our second announcement, we are upgrading our mobile Web mail experience with a faster, more feature-rich version. We wanted to give our nearly 300 million Yahoo! Mail users more options to access our service on the devices they love. The newest version of Yahoo! Mail, available today as an opt-in trial, has many of the features that you’ll find on our PC version and leverages the power of HTML5 to deliver an app-like experience never before seen on the mobile Web. It’s a mobile email experience that is:
During the trial period, our new mobile Web mail experience will be available in 28 languages across more than 200 countries. We’ve optimized it for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch running iOS 3.0+, with more mobile devices and platforms on the way.
The new HTML5 version of Yahoo! Mail is available as an opt-in beta, though we expect to upgrade everyone to this experience shortly. Get started by visiting http://y.ahoo.it/mailbeta on your phone’s browser, or by visiting http://m.yahoo.com/mail and tapping on ‘Preview the new Yahoo! Mail’.
We’re really excited about both our HTML5 Yahoo! Mail experience, and the awesome new Android applications, so give them a whirl and don’t forget to come back and let us know what you think!
Like many of you, I am an active Facebook user and have been using many of the Facebook-related features we’ve added to Yahoo! Mail since we announced our plans to integrate Facebook more deeply across all of Yahoo! last December.
Specifically, in Yahoo! Mail we’ve enabled you to import Facebook friends email addresses into Yahoo!, made it simple to post your Facebook status from Yahoo! Mail, and more. Today I’m thrilled to announce another new integration launching to all users* that enables you to view, comment, and like your Facebook news feed items – all right from Yahoo! Mail.
Facebook activity from your friends will now appear in your Updates section, alongside your friends’ activity on Yahoo!, Twitter, Flickr and so on. Now you can get all your Updates in one place, right when you log in to Yahoo! Mail.
Just like on Facebook, you can Comment or Like a news feed item right from Yahoo! Mail…
…and of course, the comment goes back to Facebook so others can see it right away.
We also know that you have different friends on Yahoo! and Facebook, and seeing all their Updates in one place may not be ideal. No problem. By default, we show both Yahoo! and Facebook items intermingled, but you can filter – All Updates, only Yahoo!, only Facebook – by clicking on that tab. Not only that, regardless of what tab you are on, anytime you get a new update on Yahoo! or Facebook, you get notified via a “Show new Updates” link without having to refresh your browser.
So there you have it – one-stop updates from across Yahoo! and Facebook, right on Yahoo! Mail, with more to come across the broader Yahoo! network soon. We hope this feature helps you easily stay in touch with the people who matter most to you. Please let us know what you think!
* = (To activate all Facebook features, you first must link your Facebook account if you have not done so already. It’s super simple! Here’s how).
Disposable Email Addresses in Yahoo! Mail (you might also know them as Addressguard) are a great way to help keep your Inbox free from spam. They are email addresses that you create and give out if you don’t want to give out your primary email address. Messages to your disposable email addresses are delivered to your Inbox or a folder you choose, and you can simply delete them if they start to receive spam.
If you’re like me and you use Disposable Email Addresses in the fight against spam, then I want to let you know about some upcoming changes to your Disposable Email Addresses. First of all, you probably know to look for the Disposable Email Addresses in the Spam section of Yahoo! Mail Options (click the ‘Options’ link in the top of your Inbox and then click ‘More Options’ or ‘Mail Options’). Soon, we are giving ‘Disposable Email Addresses’ its very own place on the Mail Options Screen. Let’s have a look:
(Please note: If you don’t see ‘Disposable Email Addresses’ as an option in the left-hand menu, you will need to sign up from the ‘Spam’ section of Mail Options.) Creating a Disposable Email Address is really very easy. Just click the ‘Add Address’ button at the top of the screen and an easy to follow wizard will walk you through creating your Disposable Email Addresses.
There are a few other changes as well. So let’s walk through each of them:
These changes to your have already begun to roll-out to Yahoo! Mail Users. If you don’t see these changes in your Yahoo! Mail Options right now, they should be showing up soon. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact our Customer Care team.
Lots of Yahoo! Mail users are Facebook users. If you follow this blog, you know that we’ve been trying to help you get more out of both services, from updating your Facebook status from Yahoo! Mail to importing your Facebook friend’s email addresses in Yahoo! Contacts. Today I’d like to tell you about a new feature that populates your contact’s details page with information from Facebook – all without you barely lifting a finger!
To activate any Facebook-related feature, you first must link your Facebook account by clicking on “Add to Facebook” in the status section of Yahoo! Mail (if you’ve linked before, you are already good to go).
After you sign in with Facebook, presto! Your Yahoo! Contacts now gets filled with information from Facebook to make it even more useful. (Plus you get all the new features we’ve launched recently – and continue to launch – in Yahoo! Mail).
Specifically, for any contact that uses Facebook, you will now see public details about them automatically added from Facebook. For example, you’ll see their Facebook photo and any information they have chosen to share publicly – like current location and work history. Your Yahoo! Contacts just populated itself!
For contacts that you are also connected with on Facebook, you get to see even more about them including their birthday, email address if you don’t have it, and even their most recent status message – right from their contact details page.
Now your Yahoo! Contacts becomes much richer – effortlessly – by supplementing details you’ve added with information automatically from Facebook (and don’t worry, we will never overwrite Facebook details with anything you’ve added). It’s just our way of helping you stay connected to the people who matter the most to you.
Again, to get started, simply link your account and you’ll be on your way to a better Yahoo! Contacts in no time! As always, please let us know what you think and thank you in advance for your feedback.
We’ve recently been hard at work helping you stay in touch with the people who matter the most to you, from posting your Facebook status from Mail to making sure you always have your friends’ updated contact information. Today I wanted to introduce another easy way to keep up with the people on Yahoo! Mail… and keep the conversation going!
Specifically, you can now comment or ‘Like’ Updates that you see on the What’s New page in Yahoo! Mail. Say, for example, that your friend rates a movie on Yahoo! Movies. Now by clicking on ‘Like’, you can show your approval.
A different friend may see that you Like it and want more information. By clicking Comment, a text box opens up where he can share his thoughts or questions on the Update.
And as with all Updates at Yahoo! Mail, you fully control what you share. Let’s say you have a second thought on something you posted. Simply click ‘Remove’ in the ‘Like’ bubble or click the ‘X’ in the comment bubble to remove anything you don’t want others to see.
These features are now live for All New Yahoo! Mail users worldwide and will be coming to Classic Mail users next week. Please let us know what you think – and happy commenting!
As you know, Yahoo! Messenger for the iPhone allows you to IM friends and family right from your iPhone wherever you are. This is a great app but something was missing: the ability to chat with your Windows Live Messenger contacts. I’m happy to announce that our colleagues on the Yahoo! Messenger team recently released a new version of the Yahoo! Messenger App for the iPhone (and iPod Touch), which allows interoperability. You can read more on their blog post
So now, on top of being able to IM your Yahoo! contacts on the go, you’ll now be able to chat with Windows Live Messenger contacts just like you do from the Yahoo! desktop client and within Yahoo! Mail.
You can download it directly from the Apple App Store.
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/yahoo-messenger/id309219097
Gregory Talon
Product Manager
If you use Facebook, Yahoo! Mail is getting better for you! As you may have heard, Yahoo! is putting a big focus on bringing you more social features, and this evening Yahoo! Mail is rolling out another handy way to connect with your friends. In select markets, we’re adding the ability to update your Facebook status right from Yahoo! Mail and see your friends’ Facebook profile photos when they email you. This quickly follows the feature we added last month that lets you easily import your Facebook friends’ email addresses to Yahoo! Contacts.
To turn on these features, first link your Yahoo! and Facebook accounts by clicking on the “Add to Facebook” link in the status section on the What’s New page in Yahoo! Mail.
After you log in with your Facebook credentials, you are good to go! Here’s what you’ll be able to do right from Yahoo! Mail:
Update your Facebook Status: Simply start typing what’s on your mind in the status box, and then choose where you want to share it – Yahoo!, Facebook or both.
Now hit “Share” and it gets posted where you want, including Facebook!
See Facebook profile photos when people email you: With this feature, you will see people’s Facebook profile photos – if available – anytime someone emails you. In addition, by clicking on the profile image, you will go right to that person’s Facebook page.
Now, whether you want to send an email, SMS, IM, or update your Yahoo! or Facebook status, you can do it all from your Yahoo! Mail inbox. This integration of Facebook is just the start of how we plan to make it easier to do more right from Yahoo! Mail. Watch this space for more ways you can bridge your social worlds and Yahoo! Mail in the weeks and months ahead!
As you know, we are always listening to your feedback. Many of you that have small computer screens have told us that you would like more space to read your emails. You spoke and we listened.
To give you more real estate to read your emails, we are adding a button just to the left of the advertisement in the All-New Yahoo! Mail. Clicking that button will hide the ad temporarily, while you read your email.
This is a handy tool, especially if you are using a computer with a smaller screen resolution like a small laptop or netbook. While it doesn’t permanently remove ads, it will give you more space while you read an email. Ads are what allow us to provide you Yahoo! Mail as a free service and hopefully they’re sometimes useful and interesting too. If you would like permanently disable ads you can sign up for Mail Plus which offers an ad-free experience and other enhanced features.
I want to let you know about some changes coming to some of the menus in the All-New version of Yahoo! Mail. We’re moving a couple of options to new places and renaming others. It’s all to make them easier to find.
The Mail Menu items are being reorganized and grouped together under ‘Actions‘ and we’re adding a new menu item called ‘Show‘. Here is a detailed look:
The ‘Actions’ menu changes are as shown here
We are also adding a ‘Show‘ menu that will allow you to view emails only from your Contacts or Connections. To view emails from your Connections, you will have to turn on the connection related features in Yahoo! Mail. You can find out how to do that in the next section.
There are also some changes to the ‘Options‘ Menu that is at the top right of your Inbox:
Here is everything you need to know about the new ‘Options‘ menu:
While that might seem like a lot, it’s actually organizing items so that they are much easier to find. And don’t forget about all the great keyboard shortcuts you can use in the All-New Yahoo! Mail. Some of these menu items can be done with one keystroke. Give it a try… Go to your Inbox and hit the ‘v’ key. Voila, you get the preview pane!