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If any of you out there use Yahoo! Mail, you might have noticed some changes to your account yesterday. Essentially they’ve introduced a smarter inbox system that prioritises messages from your contacts, plus the ability to send and receive up to 1GB worth of files. They’re also planning to introduce the ability to feed content from social media sites directly into your inbox…I gave up on Yahoo! Mail when I got an invite to the Gmail beta several years ago – essentially every second email was spam. But what about you guys? Do you still use Yahoo! Mail? Would these new features tempt you back? Let us know in comments.

Yahoo!7 announces a new era of Yahoo! Mail

Sydney, 16 December, 2008 – Yahoo!7 is today announcing the launch of the next generation of Yahoo! Mail with Australia the first country outside the United States to launch the new mail features including the Smarter Inbox, Yahoo! Updates^ and 1 GB file sharing^ which take mail to the next level for millions of Australian Yahoo! Mail users.

Yahoo! Mail enables a smarter communications experience by making the important people in your life – your connections – the centre of your online communications experience. The Smarter Inbox helps users de-clutter their inbox by prioritising messages from their connections.

With Yahoo! Updates^, the user is automatically updated whenever their connections upload photos, write reviews, post blogs and update their status across a range of websites. Without having to leave the email inbox they can see the feeds, bringing their social connections together into one place.
The 1 GB file sharing^ breaks the historical barriers to mail and allows people to share large files such as images or video files, all without leaving the inbox.

“Australians are well-known as early adopters and Yahoo!7 is bringing the new Yahoo! Mail to Australians first. We’re starting with the Smarter Inbox and will be rolling out new innovations such as Yahoo! Updates, and 1 GB file sharing in the next few months,” said Mark Helvadjian, General Manager, Consumer Platforms, Yahoo!7.

“With over 274 million users worldwide* Yahoo! Mail has a history of continuous innovation. We were the first email provider to utilize Ajax technology, the first to provide an integrated calendar, the first to provide free unlimited storage, the first with integrated interoperable messenger within mail and now we are raising the bar again on what people should expect from their email,” he said.

The new Yahoo! Mail is the company’s largest-scale implementation of its new Yahoo! Open Strategy (YOS) initiative, bringing to life Yahoo!’s Open and Social efforts in its consumer products.

Yahoo! Mail users in the United States and Australia will begin to experience the social features of the Smarter Inbox beginning today with more features rolling out in the coming months.

^available in 2009
* comScore September 2008
ENDS