Introducing the Smarter Inbox
December 16th, 2008 Filed in: All-New Mail,Classic Mail,General,Hints & Tips 28 comments
(10 votes, average: 3.90 out of 5)
Loading ...Hi everyone, the Australian mail team here at Yahoo!7 has been beavering away for the last few months to deliver some enhancements to your email experience, think of it as an early Christmas present. If you’ve logged into Yahoo!7 Mail you’ve probably already seen some of the changes which are based on your feedback on how we can improve our already excellent mail product.
One issue we heard from you was that the amount of email you receive from friends, family, newsletters, marketing emails and of course spam (the good, the bland and the ugly) has become overwhelming to the point where you find it difficult to find the emails that are really important to you. We’re going to fix this.
Another issue was in regards to attachment size limits. In this digital age, media storage capacity has outpaced the email send/receive limits. For example, 10 years ago I didn’t even own a digital camera, where as today my camera takes photos of a few megabytes in size, sending them via email is a pain as I have to resize them manually. We’re going to fix this too.
Big claims I know so let’s take you through what we’re doing. Here at Yahoo! we’ve dubbed the changes “A Smarter Inbox”. The first smart thing is allowing you to “connect” to the people who are most important to you (learn more about connections). For example let’s say you get emails from your estate agent, your partner and your mother, you may want to connect to your partner and your mother but not the estate agent. If your mum accepts the invitation the next time you get an email from them you’ll be able to see their message directly on the Mail Welcome page, so no more trawling through your inbox to find the emails which matter.
This “smarter” benefit doesn’t stop there though. If you go into the inbox or any other folder you have created within mail you can click on the “connections” button and filter out all the mail which isn’t from your most important connections. So again you can see that we’ve improved your email experience.
A further benefit of these changes is the ability for you to see “updates” from your connections on the Mail Welcome page. For now these “updates” are things that your contacts do on Yahoo! This will open up in the next month to include other websites like YouTube and Blogger. Learn more about Updates.
Rome wasn’t built in a day so we’re not changing the email attachment size today. For now the send receive limit is going to stay at 10MB per email. In the not so distant future we’re going to give our mail users the ability to share massive files of up to 1GB at any one time, pretty useful for sharing video, music and heaps of photos over email. We’re very excited about this feature as coupled with our already unlimited storage we’ll be able to offer a truly unlimited email experience.
So to recap today we’re launching a redesigned Mail Welcome page that gives you a “smarter inbox” including these features:
- Connections: Users can “connect” with others using Yahoo!’s universal profile service and designate the people whose messages and activity updates are most important to them.
- Filtered View of the Inbox and Folders: Yahoo!7 Mail users can now view a prioritised view of the inbox and folders based on their connections.
- New Welcome Page with Messages from Connections and Updates: Users receive a preview of messages from their connections, see connection suggestions made by Yahoo!, and have the ability to send and receive connection invitations. Users can also see activity Update feeds from their connections, including activity across Yahoo! and, in the future, across the Web.
We’ve got two videos that you can watch to help you understand the changes – they can viewed here:
and here:
BTW, these changes are only available to every user of the Australian Yahoo!7 Mail and a limited number of users of the US mail product.
We’d love to hear what you think of the changes and we’ll do our very best to answer your questions.
Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!
Morgan and the rest of the Yahoo!7 Mail team
Subscribe to the blog!
28 Comments Add your own
1. SN&hellip | December 16th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Please send me an invite to enable the smarter inbox for my email account.
thanks,
2. Yahoo!7 Mail Team&hellip | December 16th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Hi SN,
There’s no invite needed. The changes are currently rolling out to all users in Australia. There’s a couple of million of you so it’ll take some time to get to all of you but should see the changes in the next 72hrs or so.
all the best
Morgan
3. Tom Sculley&hellip | December 18th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Ever time I access my Mail I am now confronted with a list of so called Friends.
To be polite as I can it is pissxxg me off big time.
First, I know who my Friends are so I don’t need you to tell me.
And if that’s not bad enough your lists are full of what can only be described as serial pests,
pests who just will not leave me alone,
ceaselessly bombarding me with daily Emails,
and now you are doing the same,
but you refer to them as my friends.
Please give me a break before I give you the Flick.
Tom Sculley.
4. Yahoo!7 Mail Team&hellip | December 19th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Hi Tom,
Sorry to hear that you don’t like the new features, as the post outlines the connection process is meant to make it easier for you to access the emails that matter, e.g. those from your friends.
It would be interesting to know what you dislike about the connection suggestions, as a connection is just a way for you to access your email more quickly in the long run.
You can turn off the new features if you go into the Mail Options page.
Options > Mail Options > Untick the checkbox “Enable Connection-related features”
cheers
Morgan
5. Cath&hellip | December 20th, 2008 at 10:42 am
I agree with Tom wholeheartedly.
Can you please put a link to turn of this connections crap on the front page we’re being delayed with each time we open our mail. A number of my friends have mentioned how annoying they have found it too – most dont think to go looking for a solution unless it’s presented with them – please do that before we switch to gmail!
6. Retro Pastiche&hellip | December 20th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Does ymail have an email alert function? I’m currently using gmail because of this, I can monitor incoming emails more efficiently. I have signed up for ymail but I probably won’t use it as my primary account if I can’t have this facility.
7. tyler&hellip | December 21st, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I DONT HAVE IT
I BEEN A MEBER FOR EVER
8. Yahoo!7 Mail Team&hellip | December 22nd, 2008 at 9:57 am
Hi Retro,
To answer you question yes, Yahoo! Mail has various ways to get email reminders. You have two main options:
1. Download the Yahoo!7 Toolbar from here: http://au.toolbar.yahoo.com/
2. Download Yahoo!7 Messenger from here:
http://au.messenger.yahoo.com
all the best
Morgan
9. graham&hellip | December 28th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
The new look to yahoo mail is “Not” liked by me and it gets a thumbs down as to any options that “I’d” like to do “Ain’t” there. one good example: “Invite Connections” once loged into the e-mail. it’s something i don’t like being asked 4 milllion times to get this person to get this or do that when i “DON’T” what to as they don’t want it or they already got it. see my point. “Invite connections” should be an opional thing not there and you cannot get rid of it. still i’ll have to get use to the newer version weather i like it or not. that’s where i’ve stuck around with “Yahoo” as to “Too” many changes in MSN/Windows messenger? mail, i’ve pulled out as to that happening.
Thunbs Down in the item. there might be another comment in the near future.
10. Yahoo!7 Mail Team&hellip | December 29th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Hi Graham,
Thank you for your feedback
If you want to disable this, you can do the following in the All-New Mail:
1. Click on “Options” (top right) and choose “Mail Options” from the drop-down menu.
2. Take the tick out of “Enable Connections” and click on “Save Changes”.
3. Select “Back to Mail” (top left) to return to your mailbox.
If you are using Classic mail, you can do the following:
1. Click on “Options” (top right).
2. Under “Mail Options”, select “General Preferences on the left-hand side”.
3. Simply remove the tick from “Connection Features” under Connections then select “Save” (top right). Then click on “Mail” to head back to your mailbox.
Your mail will then return to it’s previous look and feel. You may need to refresh your web browser before you see the change take effect. You may re-enable this at any time by going back into your options and checking the box again.
All the best,
Kate
11. Carolyn&hellip | January 10th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Look, I’ve removed the tick from “connection features”, and there’s been no change whatsover – I am still faced with those suggestions every time I open yahoo, and it is terribly annoying – who wants to be reminded of every email you’ve ever had to receive?
12. Yahoo!7 Mail Blog »&hellip | January 13th, 2009 at 9:07 am
[...] no further! For a good introduction, check out Morgan’s post for an in-depth look at all the new features that Smarter Inbox [...]
13. Wolf&hellip | January 17th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Hi Morgan,
Is there a logical reason for having to go through the “New to Yahoo! Mail?” page every time I want to access my mail?
I haven’t been new to Yahoo! Mail for many years now, so why can’t your existing customers bypass the yahoo commercial and go straight to their Inbox?
Wolf
14. Yahoo!7 Mail Team&hellip | January 20th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Hi Wolf,
It sounds to me like there’s something weird happening with your account, are you using the new mail interface or the classic interface?
When the “New to Yahoo! Mail” page opens up, what link do you press, “upgrade now” or “no thanks”?
Try pressing upgrade now, if you don’t like it you can always switch back to Classic mail following the instructions here :
http://www.ymailau.com/blog/2008/10/16/switching-back-to-classic/
Lets us know how you get on.
all the best
Morgan
15. Yahoo!7 Mail Blog »&hellip | January 22nd, 2009 at 12:27 pm
[...] up on our recent posts about the launch of the Smarter Inbox, we thought we’d update you on one of the latest [...]
16. Wolf&hellip | January 24th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Hi, Morgan,
I’m using Classic, as your new interface doesn’t like the screen resolution of my old monitor.
This is the “New to Yahoo! Mail” page I’m talking about, no sign of “upgrade now” or “no thanks” links.
There used to be a time when I’d click on the little mail notification symbol, I’d go straight to my Inbox.
Wolf
17. Wolf&hellip | January 24th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Just in case the HTML for my screen shot wasn’t allowed : http://au.mail.yahoo.com/
Maybe “Sign In” page is a more precise description.
18. Yahoo!7 Mail Team&hellip | January 27th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Hi Wolf,
Sounds like you have cookies disabled on your machine. The page that you get is designed to only show to user who have never used Yahoo! Mail before. Check your cookies, the majority of people should go straight through to the sign in page.
cheers
Morgan
19. Wolf&hellip | January 27th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Nope, cookies are enabled.
If you say that most people get directed straight to their Inbox, then the problem must lie with my PC I guess.
Thank you for trying to help =)
Wolf
20. Yahoo!7 Mail Team&hellip | January 29th, 2009 at 8:25 am
Hey Wolf,
Rather than accessing mail via http://au.mail.yahoo.com try going through http://mail.yahoo.com
cheers
Morgan
21. Terry, Ellen & Cather&hellip | April 6th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I am beside myself as to why the invite connections ever started & why you need to have assistance in that regard. DUmb, dumb, dumb
It is like Telstra giving you a sservice but at a charge & you have to notify them if you do not want it. Let subscribers sunscribe. Will try this smart box
22. dave&hellip | July 14th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Hi.
when i log into my email, Bottom right corner i see saying connection suggestions and i either have the option to invite or not. I dont want thos option, its annoying and i dont want it, ive searched the net for ways to disable this and say the same thing. Unceck the the box for Enable Connection-related features (Messages, Suggestions, Updates).
Ive done this it dosent work, any other way to get rid of the annoying unwanted feature.
thanks
23. Samuel&hellip | September 7th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
How come my mail didn’t change?
24. Samuel&hellip | September 7th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
I am using classic mail, My sister’s changed mine didn’t!
25. Samuel&hellip | September 7th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
i’ve had this mail for three years !
26. Samuel&hellip | September 7th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Please help
27. Laura&hellip | October 29th, 2009 at 9:57 am
my email will not let me access my email page and i know there are emails there and my frigging password and email are both “correct” i have been using yahoo for quite a while so quite frankly im really pissed off.
please tell me how i can access my email when its not already signed in.
i think i am on the new yahoo but cant be sure.
any suggestions on how i can get in i would greatly appreciate it.
thanks
28. peter&hellip | December 25th, 2009 at 4:50 am
hey guys, check this: sometimes when i click on yahoo inbox off my toolbar, it redirects me to my own flickr site! how come?! i must then type yahoo.co.uk…cheers
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed