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Yahoo! Launches New Yahoo Mail and Removes Beta Tag

Just this last monday, Yahoo closed its two-year public test for its new version of email, Yahoo Mail. The result embraces enhancements that will be key in boosting it's usage and advertising growth.

While the new version has been available to all service users for almost a year in beta form, Yahoo announced some of the new improvements and removed the beta tag. In the next six weeks, all 254 million active users will have the new version.

New Yahoo Email Features

One of the most significant changes have to do with instant messenger, where users are now able to initiate an instant messaging session with Yahoo Messenger users from within Yahoo Mail, similar to that of Google's Gmail and chat. It also extends to include Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger users and will be available worldwide.

Also, users in the U.S., India, Canada and the Philippines will get the ability to send text messages to mobile phones from within an email message window.

In the U.S., the new Yahoo Mail has also gained a feature called Shortcuts that has been available in the classic version, letting the system to automatically recognize dates and addresses. This will allow users the option of adding the information to their Yahoo Calendar and Contacts list, displaying a map inside the Yahoo Mail interface and launching Web searches.

The new Yahoo Mail offers a redesigned user interface that works similar to a typical desktop email application. For instance, users can drag and drop messages into folders, open multiple message windows, perform actions via keyboard shortcuts and preview messages’ content in a pane.

While the new version doesn't work with Apple's Safari Web browser, Mac users are urged to use Firefox instead. Meantime, Yahoo is still working on compatibility with Safari. Since Safari 3 is still in beta, Yahoo and Apple are working together to come up with a solution.

The new Yahoo Mail will now become the service’s primary version but users will be able to continue using the classic version.

Yahoo Mail is one of the oldest and most popular - their new email make-over should certainly make current users happy, if not win over at least some of the competitors' users.

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