Today Yahoo
is releasing the new Ajax-powered version of Yahoo Mail to all users in the US and across
18 international markets. Previously Yahoo Mail Beta (as it is known) was only available
to a relatively small group of people.
I spoke exclusively to Ethan Diamond, director of product management for the new Yahoo! Mail, to talk about the product. Ethan was previously the founder of Oddpost, a pioneer in Ajaxian web email, which got acquired by Yahoo in July 2004 - so he is the perfect person to speak to when it comes to web email.
Download Read/WriteWeb Interview with Ethan Diamond (3.8 MB)
Yahoo! Mail is the No. 1 Web mail service in the world - it has 255 million users according to comScore's July 2006 figures. By comparision, MSN Hotmail has 234 million, AOL Mail 56 million and Google's Gmail 49 million. Check out our overview of the web email market, for more context. So this release of Ajax functionality in Y! Mail Beta to 255M-odd users represents the largest scale use of Ajax in the world - together with the release earlier this year of Yahoo's re-designed homepage.
Yahoo Mail Beta
The new Yahoo Mail Beta is touted as being as functional as a desktop email client (such as Outlook). Other new features include an integrated calendar timeline (including mashups with Yahoo Maps), drag and drop e-mail organization, message preview, tabs for messages, plus an integrated RSS reader. There are also plenty of links to other Yahoo properties, such as this one just above the inbox: "Start your own blog here" (which leads to Yahoo360).
In my testing of the product, my favorite feature so far is a seemingly simple - yet surprisingly effective - one: the ability to have multiple e-mail messages open at the same time using tabs. Given that I virtually live in my email inbox and often am conducting a few email conversations at a time, this feature comes in very handy!
My only gripe about the product is that it is advertising heavy - but then people could say the same about my blog! ;-) They are predominantly ads for other Yahoo properties though.
Calendar view
RSS Reader integrated with email
The podcast interview has been edited (mostly to cut down my long-winded questions I think!), but following are the questions I prepared for Ethan. I re-phrased some of them during the interview...
1) Can you give us a bit of history about both Yahoo Mail and Oddpost, how they've evolved over the years and eventually (finally?) become integrated. And leading on from that question, Yahoo acquired Oddpost in July 2004 - why has it taken so long for Yahoo Mail to incorporate some of the Ajax features that Oddpost had 2-3 years ago?
2) The new Yahoo Mail Beta will function more like a desktop client application - including using the traditional 3-pane view, having folders, drag and drop, and so on. Some would argue that web-based email requires a different UI paradigm than a desktop client - for example Gmail's "conversation view" and labels instead of folders are two features that I love. Why does Yahoo believe that the desktop UI paradigm is right for web-based email too?
3) Tell us more about the calendar timeline, which is one of the main new features. What makes it different from your main competitors (Google, Microsoft, AOL)? One difference seems to be the Yahoo Maps integration with calendar - is that available outside the US?
4) The integrated RSS Reader is an interesting feature, because once Yahoo Mail Beta goes live to your 250M or so mainstream users - that will automatically make Yahoo Mail by far the biggest RSS Reader on the planet. It will go a long way towards making RSS mainstream in fact. How will you promote this new feature to your user base, given that RSS feeds are still not widely used in 'the real world'?
5) Tabbed messages is a nice UI innovation, meaning you can open and compose different email messages in multiple tabs. How did that feature come about?
6) What's the marketing strategy for the beta roll-out - will you be aggressively promoting it across Yahoo's properties and in mainstream media?
7) What's the timeline for going live with the new Yahoo Mail Beta (i.e. when will the "beta" be taken off)?
8) What's your vision for web email for the next 5 or so years? Now that rich interaction can be achieved using Ajax and all the major Internet companies have done that with their web email services, what can we as consumers expect next from web email? More integration with other Web Office apps, for example?
Update: A screencast has now been made available.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Yahoo! Mail Beta Release - Exclusive Podcast With Ethan Diamond.
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Comments
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Richard, great post! Feel free to steal my chart made based on your market share list in your third paragraph:
Posted by: Nathan Weinberg | September 13, 2006 9:57 PMRSS reader not available from France :(
Posted by: christophe | September 13, 2006 11:09 PMI don't see a link to upgrade to the beta version here in the U.S. Are you sure they've opened the beta up today? I am looking forward to trying it out.
Posted by: joe | September 14, 2006 6:48 AMGreat post Richard!
Posted by: Marshall | September 14, 2006 8:41 AMTo joe and other US users:
Posted by: beyondthesea | September 14, 2006 11:14 AMYou will have to go to Yahoo! Mail Beta to sign up for trial. This is the link: http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/.
The old Yahoo! Mail remains as is.
You're showing their "classic" calendar, not the new calendar timeline that's in the new beta.
Posted by: calendar fan | September 14, 2006 12:35 PMGood catch calendar fan, I've now updated the calendar pic in my post. Thanks.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | September 14, 2006 1:48 PMIt's not available to all users yet. I get an "uninvited" message saying it's being rolled out gradually. The possible reasons: I seldom use Yahoo email, and I'm located in Japan.
Posted by: Wataru | September 14, 2006 6:50 PMOuch!! that is soooo painfully so....It's like the gorgeous person that is just not worth the wait :(
Keep working on it.....
Posted by: Josh Maher | September 14, 2006 8:57 PMInclude pictures of contact person in address book and other IM info in mail beta.
Posted by: J06 | September 15, 2006 5:16 AMThe Beta is quite an improvement on the older version. It does come pretty close to the speed and functionality of a desktop email client and that will make a difference to people considering whether to shell out all that money for a copy of Outlook. Of course there are alternatives to Outlook but it is entrenched in the general mindset.
Posted by: Paul | September 15, 2006 8:10 AMBut does it support multi level (heirarchical) folders? That is the single biggest failing of Google. I wonder if yahoo has filled in this huge, gaping hole.
Posted by: Csaba Gabor | September 15, 2006 9:13 AMSIr this is very grand news to yahoo mail.now i m very pleassure to yahoo upgrade email account.
Posted by: Aqib Furqan | September 16, 2006 7:20 AMGreat job yahoo! I love the new BETA version. There are just so many possibilities.
Posted by: Manuela | September 16, 2006 7:38 AMMany well thought out new features, but the Inbox List view is painfully slow to scroll. Unfortunately due to that reason alone I had to switch back to the original mail client.
Posted by: Ray Brush | September 16, 2006 10:19 AMI have a couple of questions:
With the old version, I had an easy way of categoroizing contacts: There was a category field on the edit contact screen, and I could enter the category(ies). This field does not seem to be available with the new Mail BETA, on the edit contact screen. So, how can I easily categorize contacts?
In a related question, it seems that the new BETA will only allow me to group contacts that have a valid email address. This did not seem to be the case with the old version. I need to be able to group contacts that I don't have email addresses for.
Posted by: Nat | September 16, 2006 11:17 AMI think the new Yahoo mail is OK, but the performance is extremely slow. Also I don't like the ads occupying real estate on the right.
Posted by: Girish | September 18, 2006 6:32 AM---------------------------------
I truly love Yahoo Mail (Beta). The interface is great. The features are amazing. It's simply easy to use.
HOWEVER, I feel like I'm being spammed with advertisements whenenver I use it.
I'm extremely sadden because the advertisements are do dang distracting that I find that I don't ***want*** to use Yahoo mail beta ... and instead use webmail from a competitor who yes, offers less features and a poor UI but doesn't spam me with ad's.
Just 2 cents from a user who loves Yahoo mail but can live without the large 500x500 pixel ad's.
Posted by: Travis | September 18, 2006 10:06 PMI hope this is a forum for feedback.... I have a lot to say.
What a great start Yahoo!! ... I'd like to say THANK YOU for allowing me to Ctrl-A select all messages in a folder and then "Delete" ... 50000 messages gone in a matter of a few minutes, not hours.
I'm not fond of the typewriter. Every mouse click causes 5 or six different frames to refresh, forcing IE to click at every one. I like IE click, I don't like the typewriter. Perhaps you can have a javascript controller running that would update the text inside the frames instead of changing their location.
Also, in the message manifest, it would help to have a horizontal line between each row in the manifest.
Lastly, keep working on speed. Arrowing and mouse-wheeling down lists needs to be snappier.
Flashy ads without sound don't bother me. Make your money with silent ad revenue. Thanks for providing us with a high quality web mail client.
Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Chris | September 19, 2006 12:15 PMnew Yahoo! Mail is damn cool. Many of my friends have migrated to Gmail in the recent past and now am sure that they will start using their Yahoo Mail accounts as primary one from now.
But there are few more options that we can expect - like 1)'refresh' button takes you back to Home, rather than keeping the opened tabs.
2)Allow more tabs to be opened separately, instead of replacing existing one; so on ...........
I admire Yahoo for what it is, am sure that it will move further>
Cheers
Posted by: praphul | September 19, 2006 1:59 PMI dont receive the ajax update of the yahoo mail
Posted by: Mahesh | September 29, 2006 11:22 AMpls do it
Thanks
I have change as per beta mail please help me
Thanks
pruthviraj
Posted by: pruthviraj | October 1, 2006 2:40 AMThe upgrade has been a disaster. The system is now running so slowly that yahoo mail is impossible to use. Please tell us how we can solve this problem
Posted by: Adam Pode | October 3, 2006 12:15 PMWhat happened to the "Comic" font?
Posted by: Susan Schutz | October 4, 2006 9:01 AMWhat happened to the column in the spam folder that lets you see what address it was sent to?!? It's sitll in the in-box but it has vanished in the spam folder. Please bring this back. I really helps track what addy is getting spammed. Thanks.
Posted by: Brian | October 5, 2006 8:40 PMum, this isn't the Yahoo Mail Helpdesk... ;-)
Posted by: Richard MacManus | October 5, 2006 9:44 PMNothing!
Posted by: Jayford Alantaol | October 6, 2006 5:17 AMCan the new Yahoo Photo Mail also be associated with the New Yahoo Mail (Beta)? It is available for the old Yahoo Mail.
Posted by: Paul Dolnick | October 6, 2006 9:33 PMHI all. With the "old" yahoomail, you could toggle between inboxes for yahoo and a second yahoo provided business email account within the app. In the early beta, the second account wasn't there. Does anyone know if this is fixed? Without it, I had to revert to the original. Thx.
Posted by: Bruce | October 9, 2006 11:26 AMwhy cant i log in now? ihave a sign in name that clears but then it takes me to awhite page that says LOGGING IN TROUBLE WHEN I CLICK IT I GET A PAGE WITH WAY TO MUCH DETAIL
Posted by: SILVIA | October 11, 2006 12:28 PMLooks okay but nut great since ads are all over the place. I can't see a blog link neither.
Posted by: streamcast | October 11, 2006 1:52 PMDeer Regats!
Sorry not is writing english.
My problem:
Not setting default code.
Auto select (default) is wrong.
Latin-2 (ISO-8859-2) is good.
Wher is setting if all mail encoding Latin-2 ?
Thank you
Posted by: Pozsy | October 12, 2006 8:19 AMPozsy
p.s.: Very good is new email image.
I have upated my yahoo mail to yahoo mail beta few days ago. However, other that, I was unable to enter my mail box any more. Please hep me to slove the problem as I don't know what have happened.
Posted by: Fiona Chan | October 13, 2006 2:58 AMBest regards
Fiona
Thanks
Posted by: Pozsy | October 13, 2006 9:13 AMI have been using the beta and I am happy with everything except a couple of things. First is the speed, which I am sure will improve. Secondly, everytime I send an email it takes me to a page that tells me that I sent I am issued a message sent folder and I have to click on OK to clear the folder from view. I believe this folder should only be brough up if there is a new email address in the email that I am sending that I might want to save, otherwise I feel this is very unnecessary. I have always gone to my sent folders to verify that it was sent.
Posted by: Stephanie Hutley | October 13, 2006 1:18 PMI agree with a previous statement about where the advertising is. Wouldn't fitting the advertisement between the unopened mail field and the opened mail be as effective and give a wider field to the reading space. I am also having problems with lag in scrolling, retreival and changing fields. I do enjoy the user interface. I hope you squash your bugs quickly.
Posted by: Scott | October 13, 2006 4:47 PMtanke you
Posted by: morteza mosavi | October 13, 2006 6:54 PMI want a perfect girl to sear everythin.
Posted by: khairul | October 15, 2006 10:04 PMI was on my inbox. Got timed out. Then got login back notification. On Clicking login back, it opened in a popup window. NOT A GOOD USER EXPERIENCE.
Posted by: Dinesh | October 17, 2006 9:09 PMJust want you to know that I really like the new YahooMail. The only suggestion I have is on the calendar bar on the bottom of the window. The pop-up window is great, but it would be a lot more helpful if the "location" line had "smart tags" that link it to our contact list. For example, if I have a meeting at "Troy High School", have the system look in my contact list to match the location of the place and display a map for it. Currently, it guesses about what I mean by "Troy High School" and displays an unrelated map.
Other than that, GREAT JOB!
Posted by: Rene | October 18, 2006 9:12 AMI signed up for beta mail and I cannot login to yahoo at all now, no messenger no mail no user, this sucks wish that I never changed it, can't get any help from yahoo>
Posted by: Lydia | October 18, 2006 11:56 AMi'm empress thats why i need to get free yahoo mail beta.
Posted by: robert david | October 19, 2006 7:37 PMyesterday i got the invitation for yahoo mail beta which i accepted. Now I cannot access my mailbox. Each time I open my account, this tutorial showing new features of beta
Posted by: ruid | October 21, 2006 2:37 AMI would really like to be able to filter my inbox into custom folders.
Posted by: Krazy Keysha | October 24, 2006 2:34 PMI really like the new beta but it does not open attachments. When someone sends me a file, yahoo beta does not actually save the file - it looks like it is going to do it and lets me select a file name but then saves a 0kb file.
This has been this way for a long time and on both IE6 and IE7, same result on different computers.
Is there something I'm doing wrong? Been a Yahoo!er for many years.
Posted by: Mike_in_Fla | October 24, 2006 7:56 PMHey anyone interested in an online friend e-mail me at cat_2_nite@hotmail.com
Posted by: Katana | October 25, 2006 5:46 PMWhy can't I use Safari to access my email on yahoo ?
Posted by: Chih-Hao Chien | October 28, 2006 10:34 AMhello there! can anyone tell me what is it about?
Posted by: Razwan Ullah | October 30, 2006 11:22 PMI've ACCIDENTALLY deleted about 7 letters after logging in my first time ((
Posted by: Odonata | November 2, 2006 8:43 AMI updated now can't get my mail
Posted by: R.Harris | November 6, 2006 12:16 PMI updated now can't get my mail
Posted by: R.Harris | November 6, 2006 12:17 PMEver since Yahoo beta came out I have not been able to read my mail or even login into my mail account...
Posted by: Tommy | November 10, 2006 3:27 PMI am trying out the new Beta. I find it slow, and for some reason after each mouse-click as I navigate around I get alot of "clicking" sounds. Could just be my set up?
the large ad on the right is annoying...
Thanks
Posted by: Jan | November 19, 2006 8:08 AM