Yahoo! Connects You to What Matters Most Announces New Versions of Yahoo!Messenger and Search
— Today Yahoo!Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) is advancing three of its most popular global products as part of its vision to be the center of people’s online lives. Yahoo! has introduced a number of innovations to Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger and is testing a new Yahoo! Search results page, demonstrating a relentless commitment to deliver personally relevant experiences. In addition, Yahoo! is creating a more consistent look and feel with the introduction of a new universal header that extends Search Assist to the search box on every Yahoo! page in the United States.
“The evolution you see today reflects our focus on enabling people to connect with what matters to them most,” said Ari Balogh, Yahoo! executive vice president of Products & Chief Technology Officer. “This renewed focus on providing a more personally relevant online experience began with our recent Yahoo! homepage launch and continues to come to life across products like Mail, Messenger and Search – with much more to come.
” Yahoo! Mail Lets You Do More – Anytime, Anywhere People can now do more, share more and stay better connected from their inbox, saving time and the need to visit multiple websites to get things done.The Yahoo! Mail enhancements are a key milestone in the Yahoo! Open Strategy (Y!OS), further extending social and open features to people worldwide. New features include: * Streamlined Design – A new Application Box that people can personalize to fit their needs combines Calendar, Notepad and third-party apps, providing a cleaner, more streamlined inbox and making it easier to manage e-mail folders (available in New Yahoo! Mail). * Useful Apps – Adding to the portfolio of third-party apps available, a new Evite app launching next month will let people easily create and send Evite invitations, check on the status of events and add them to their Yahoo! Calendar directly from their inbox.
The growing list of apps, which also includes Flickr, PayPal, Picnik, Xoopit and ZumoDrive, will be available worldwide in the coming months.
More details on all apps are available athttp://overview.mail.yahoo.com/applications (available in New Yahoo! Mail). * Enhanced Photo Sharing – New multi-select and drag-and-drop functionality makes it dramatically easier to attach more photos to e-mail, view thumbnail previews and rotate pictures (available in New Yahoo! Mail).
* Increased Attachment Limits – With more people sharing and receiving larger amounts of photos everyday, Yahoo! Mail has extended the attachment limit for photos and files up to 25MB (up from 10MB) (available in New Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Mail Classic).
* More Social Features –
In the coming weeks, people worldwide can take advantage of new social features to stay updated on what friends and family are sharing online, including the ability to view the most recent e-mails from contacts and receive birthday reminders. Additionally, with an improved Yahoo! Contacts solution, people automatically have current information whenever a contact changes their name, e-mail address or phone number (available in New Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Mail Classic).
* E-mail, On the Go – A new Yahoo! Mail experience for the mobile phone makes it easier than ever for people to stay on top of their e-mail with one-click access to check, compose, and search e-mail. Additionally, support for downloading attachments such as Microsoft Office documents, PDF files and photos has been added, as well as the ability to access personal folders.
Enhancements will be accessible on more than 400 devices with HTML browsers by visiting m.yahoo.com, beginning with the Safari browser today and additional devices planned for September 1.
Yahoo! Messenger Keeps You in Closer Touch Yahoo! Messenger 10 allows users to instantly communicate with friends and family around the world through new interactive and social features. Enhancements include: * Video Calls – New high-quality video calling enables full-screen, face-to-face chats at no cost, using the familiar and easy-to-use Yahoo! Messenger environment. * Updates Tab – A new tab helps people easily discover Updates from friends and family, including status updates, recent Flickr uploads, Yahoo! Buzz stories, Twitter updates and more.
* New Yahoo! Insider – Now customizable by zip code, this re-designed welcome window provides Messenger users with easy access to localized news and weather, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Buzz and Yahoo! Search. * Language Selector – Catering to its popularity among a global audience, Yahoo! Messenger now lets people choose from more than 16 languages without having to download a different version. * Improved iPhone App – People can now receive messages from Yahoo! Messenger contacts even when they are using a different app on their iPhone.
New Yahoo! SearchExperience Gives You Personally Relevant Results Demonstrating its commitment to continued innovation in the search experience, Yahoo! is testing a new search results page, aligned with the design of the new Yahoo! homepage and aimed at making Web search more personally relevant. The test, available randomly to millions worldwide, delivers a differentiated search experience that lets people better explore the things, people and websites that matter to them most.
New functionality being tested includes: * Results Filtering Options – The page provides new tools for refining search results including exploring related concepts, displaying only results from popular Yahoo! and third-party sites, and narrowing results by different types of content such as people, videos and discussion forums. * Intelligent Search Results – Enhanced assistance creates a more personally relevant experience that better understands what people are looking for based on prior searches. It is powered by search session science that detects intent by looking at search behavior over time.
For example, a search for “Paris” followed by searches for “flights” and “cheap hotels” helps Yahoo! Search understand that someone is seeking travel-related content versus gossip about a Hollywood heiress.
* Easy Access to Search Controls –
The new site provides quick access to Search Scan/SafeSearch, which helps protect users from viruses, spyware and search spam, and Search Pad, the personal research assistant that lets people capture, organize, save and share information they find while researching online. * Search Assist Expansion – Yahoo!’s popular real-time query suggestion engine, Search Assist, has been introduced to the search box on every Yahoo! page in the U.S. with the launch of a new universal header.
This new header unifies key design and navigation elements, with links to popular Yahoo! destinations such as My Yahoo!, Finance, News, Sports, Mail and the Yahoo! homepage.
About Yahoo! Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global consumer brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! is where millions of people go every day to see what is happening with the people and things that matter to them most.
Yahoo! helps marketers reach that audience with its unique and compelling advertiser proposition.
Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit http://pressroom.yahoo.com or the company’s blog, Yodel Anecdotal (http://yodel.yahoo.com).
Yahoo! and Yodel Anecdotal are the trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Yahoo! Inc. © 2009 Yahoo! Inc., All rights reserved.
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SOURCE: Yahoo! Inc. Yahoo!Inc. Jason Khoury, 408-349-3435
(Mail/Messenger) jkhoury@yahoo-inc.com or Sheila Tran, 408-349-6455
(Search) tsheila@yahoo-inc.com or OutCast Communications Liz Clinkenbeard, 415-392-8282 liz@outcastpr.com