Yahoo! Mail Blog, UK and Ireland

NOTE: Thanks to a comment from Lee Fuller, I’ve amended this post to account for the different versions of Yahoo Mail…

There’s lots of reasons to get a second email address. You’ve got a special project going that needs a special address. You want all those emails about online purchases going to one place. You want to keep one for friends and family and one for everyone else. Or, you could be like me and just like the extra flexibility it gives you.

For the all-new Yahoo! Mail:
It’s a piece of cake to get set up. Just click Options, then select Mail Options. Go to the list on the left then click Accounts. You’ll find the bottom half of the page is cunningly called “Extra Mail Address”. Just click Get Started and follow the instructions. Couldn’t be simpler.

For the classic version of Yahoo! Mail:
It’s still a piece of cake to get set up. Just click Options, then select Mail (if it’s not already selected). Go to the list on the right then click Mail Addresses. You’ll be able to add, edit and delete the extra addresses from there. Just like above, it couldn’t be simpler.

Happy emailing!
Andrew - Yahoo! Mail Team

There’s nothing more annoying than losing an email. We do have a very powerful search engine in Yahoo! Mail but sometimes the phrase you’re searching on is so vague and general that you end up trawling through masses of messages, even after you’ve filtered your inbox with a search.

Our engineers have delivered a great solution to this. Now, when I type a term (”golf” in the example below), not only do I get the mass of messages matching that term in the inbox view but I also see a breakdown of all matching emails categorised by sender, folder, date, attachment type and message status.

Click this image to see a full-size version:

So now, if I’m looking for the photos my dad sent me from our last game of golf, I just type search for “golf”, then hop to the category box and look up emails from my dad as the sender. Or, I could choose only photo attachment types. Either way, I find what I’m looking for, double quick.

Happy email finding
Jon, Yahoo! Mail Team

OK - this is the second post for this feature (read the first one if you want). OK, it was there in the beta but we’ve beefed it up with a couple of key additions… best of which, you can now chat to people on Windows Live™ Messenger too.

What’s all this then?
We’ve integrated Yahoo! Messenger into New Yahoo! Mail. That means you can now have a live conversation with someone right from within your Yahoo! Mail mailbox. You can talk this way with anyone who has a Yahoo! or Windows Live™ Messenger ID. That’s almost everyone isn’t it?

Here’s how
When you log into your mailbox you’ll see, at the top of the window, a status message and a drop down arrow. When you click that icon, here’s what you’re going to see…

Once you set yourself Available, your contact list will show all of your contacts that have set themselves Available too. From here, you can select anyone on that list and start a conversation with them right from the comfort of your own Mailbox window. Here’s what it’s going to look like when you’re engrossed in a conversation with one of your friends:

Or, like this, or this…
We’ve added a couple of other new ways to start a chat. Yahoo! Mail is more than just email these days, so if you click on the arrow next to the New button (top left) you can choose “Chat” to open a chat window and go from there. Or, if you want to be really flash, you can use the keyboard shortcut. Just hit “c” and you’re off.

Not up for a chat?
As always, you can always turn this feature off too. I’ve posted about how to do that.
Happy chatting!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Beta Team

The standard Yahoo! Mail interface was grey (sorry, chrome) – smart, slick and professional. But it’s Autumn now and it’s grey enough outside so we thought: let’s have a bit of colour!

Now you can choose from one of six colours for your inbox. It’s one of the things people have been asking for ever since we launched new Yahoo! Mail Beta and we’re really pleased with the results. Hope you are too.

Here’s how to splash about some colour:

1. Click on the Options menu (top right, next to Help)
2. Roll over the Colours selection
3. Make your choice
4. Try out the other five (optional)

Enjoy.

Andrew - Yahoo! Mail Team

A while back we posted about introducing unlimited storage to everyone. We also mentioned that we were fast approaching our 10 year anniversary. That day has come! On October 8, 2007, Yahoo! Mail officially turned 10. The VP of mail, John Kremer, published the message below on the corporate blog. It definitely makes for some good reading and a bit of nostalgia.

Happy emailing!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

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Happy 10th Birthday, Yahoo! Mail

Today marks a special milestone for Yahoo!. Ten years ago today, Yahoo! Mail was born. It’s hard to imagine that just a decade ago, the idea of free email accessible from anywhere was a novelty.

Think of how far we’ve come since then. Web mail now is one of the most popular ways to stay in touch. It’s brought families closer together, let travelers send regards from the road, and made the concept of change-of-address notices virtually obsolete.

Ten years ago, Yahoo! Mail launched with just 3 megabytes of storage and the only images you were likely to receive were ASCII Art. Today, JPEGs are by far the most popular attachment type in Yahoo! Mail. Ten years ago mobile phones were bulky, expensive luxuries that were basically used for one thing: to make important phone calls. These days, everyone from students to busy parents and grandparents use their cell phones to check email on the go. And ten years ago, many people didn’t “get” Web mail or why they would need an address that wasn’t tethered to their ISP. Now many use it as their primary personal mail address.

Since we’re feeling nostalgic, we’ve put together some email milestones from the last decade:

• October 1997: Yahoo! Mail launches following our acquisition of Four 11, creators of RocketMail.
• December 1998: The movie You’ve Got Mail debuts.
• March 1999: CNN’s Ten Commandments of Email cites that Americans sent 2.1 billion emails daily (vs. 196 billion per day this year).
• December 1999: Yahoo! Mail launches Spamguard to detect spam and banish it to a separate folder.
• January 2000: Web mail survives Y2K.
• November 2001: Pope John Paul II is the first pontiff to send an email apology.
• March 2002: It’s reported internationally that email outpaces snail mail as the preferred method for residential communication.
• December 2003: Congress passes the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 to regulate the sending of commercial email.
• July 2004: Yahoo! acquires Oddpost, bringing AJAX to Yahoo! and inspiring Yahoo! Mail’s most significant upgrade ever.
• June 2005: Broadway’s “Spamalot” wins Tony Award for Best Musical.
• March 2006: IDG study shows that Americans sent 11.8 billion photos via email in 2005, compared with 2.6 billion in 2000. By 2009, this number is projected to 25.7 billion images.
• March 2007: Yahoo! Mail announces free, unlimited e-mail storage for all users.
• August 2007: According to Comscore , the worldwide Web mail market counts approximately 543 million people, with Yahoo! Mail alone representing 255 million.

It’s funny to reflect that when Rocketmail first started, many users chose to list their email addresses in a public directory because they wanted everyone to know how to contact them. Fast-forward to a world where we invest a huge amount of time and diligence protecting our users from spam (now estimated to represent more than 70% of all email) and phishing attacks.

So what about you? We put together a brief survey to find out how your email habits have evolved over the past 10 years. Please share your thoughts with us (or leave them as comments), and we’ll be sure to report back on our findings later this month.

Until then, happy emailing!

John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail

I’m not sure if you’ve read about this but I wanted to let you in on a not-so-well kept secret. In fact, you should pass this on to all your friends that don’t have a Yahoo! email address. Yahoo!, along with eBay and PayPal, announced recently that we’ll all be collaborating to protect you against fraudulent emails and phishing attacks. Read the full press release here.

Why is that good news for us Yahoo! Mail users?
Now that eBay and Paypal are confidently using DomainKeys we will begin taking strong action against fraudulent, spoofed messages. This is great news for those of us with eBay and Paypal accounts. And this should encourage other online companies to sign up for authentication and DomainKeys/DKIM, making e-mail safer for everyone.

Our corporate blog has more info. You can read it here.

Happy emailing.
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Beta Team