New Beta Version of My Yahoo!
Earlier today we launched a beta version of the all-new My Yahoo!. If you already have a My Yahoo! page, just go to the Beta Update Page and click the “Update My Page” button to get it.
As you may remember, earlier this year we started testing the ability to add RSS feeds to My Yahoo!. People told us that they wanted to use My Yahoo! to keep up with content & services from across the Web and customize their personalized start page even more.
And thanks to content syndication standards like RSS and Atom, we now have a great way to offer more choice for our users.
Well, it took off like wildfire. People sent us a ton of feedback about how they loved this feature and what we could do to make it even better. Soon thereafter, “Add to My Yahoo” buttons started popping up all over the Web.
Then we decided to go a step further and completely remake My Yahoo! around the simple idea of giving users the content they want, when they want it – all in one place. The hard part was this: now that you can add literally millions of things to your page, how do we make it easy to find what you are looking for?
We tried to address that issue in a few ways:
Search – Thanks to people adding feeds to our beta module, we have built up a searchable database of over a quarter million feeds (and growing). My favorite example: search for “cub scouts” (Pack 34 has an RSS feed? Love that!)
Directory – Since there’s so much out there, we asked our editorial team of Web surfers to pull together some of the best content into a browse-able directory. Wanna see all the best parenting blogs & info? We’ve got a category for that.
Popular from around the Web - I’ll be keeping an eye on this as we roll out the new My Yahoo!. Right now it shows what’s the most popular from our RSS module. I’m looking forward to watching this grow as users find out all the content they can add to their page.
Editors Picks - This is what’s so cool about having a team of editors helping us out: they scour the Web for interesting sites that publish content and then highlight some of the stuff you might not find otherwise like New Urban Legends from scopes.com.
Can’t decide? – The most “hidden” feature is our News Search tracker. Do a search over on Yahoo! News Search and then click the “Add to My Yahoo” link and you can track the latest news on anything you can come up with: like My Yahoo!. ;)
I’ve probably run out of room for this posting, so go ahead and get the beta from the Beta Update Page. Then be sure to tell us what you think (you’ll see a link for feedback after you update). The way we look at it, this release is only the beginning.
Scott Gatz
My Yahoo! Team
P.S. If you publish an RSS/Atom feed from your site or blog, add it to your own My Yahoo! page. It’s automatically added to our database for anyone to discover, and it’s pretty cool to see your blog on a page next to Reuters, USA Today, and your Stock Quotes. Then put an “Add to My Yahoo” button on your site. (Tons more info is in our FAQ for Publishers. Check it out.)
Looks like you have a DHTML/Javscript bug in Firefox for OS X. The link for “select page” doesn’t do anything, and without the page tags across the top there is no way to access the other pages. I had all of my RSS fees on one page, and now they are inaccessible :(
Thanks Eric. My guess is that you are using Firefox PR 1 (the preview release just came out a week or so ago) which we know has issues with My Yahoo right now. We’re working with the firefox team to figure out the best way to handle those issues. In the mean time we know My works quite well with Safari 1.22 and Firefox 0.9. You might give those a try – and we are working on it!
Cool, My Yahoo Plus homepage is updated as well…really cool
I tried setting up a news alert as an RSS feed on my yahoo page. Didn’t work:
http://e.my.yahoo.com/config/cstore;_ylt=AsydZcBWUPzzjM8JABlPSYxI1PAI
We couldn’t find the RSS file you asked for http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=%22tim+bishop%22&ei=UTF-8&fl=0
Your post says that if I add a personalized RSS feed containing my user ID to My Yahoo, “it’s automatically added to our database for anyone to discover.”
Does this mean that my user ID — which can access my personal profile on that Web site — will be shared with all Yahoo users?
I’m apparently not eligible for the beta. The only thing I coul,d think of is because i use Yahoo DSL which customizes My Yahoo already?
Once we update the page to the Beta, is there some way to revert back to the old one?
If the beta had any problems then I dont want to get stuck with it till Yahoo fixes it — like the Firefox PR1 issue above, for example.
Nice to see, congrats!
One niggle – the search results feed isn’t actually valid – there is no term pubDate in the RSS 1.0 namespace.
I just noticed – nor is there rss:language, rss:ttl, rss:lastBuildDate. See xmlns:rss=”http://purl.org/rss/1.0/”
One of the things about my yahoo that really bugs me is that just because I use SBC DSL I get an inferior service.
About a year ago they forced me from my yahoo to SBC’s my yahoo. The big difference? Yep you guessed it I get a big add banner at the top of my my yahoo page. Other than that it’s basically the same thing.
So let’s see. If I don’t pay SBC money I get a better my yahoo for free. If I happen to be a SBC DSL client then I get an inferior product and I have to pay SBC money. I wish there was some way to hide the fact that I’m an SBC customer from Yahoo!.
To make matters worse, of course because again I’m a paying customer and not a free account, everyone else can update their my yahoo account today and I cannot.
When SBC/Yahoo! forced me into this new my yahoo I lost a bunch of calendar data as a result of the process.
I wish Yahoo! treated SBC my yahoo clients as well as they treated those that use their service for free.
No issues with FF 1.0 PR.
One thing the new My Yahoo is missing is an easy subscribe link, similar to the Bloglines easy subscribe. (At least I couldn’t find one)
We made a My Yahoo “easy subscribe” bookmarklet.
Simply drag the javascript below on to your browser’s bookmark bar, and a bookmark will automatically be created.(you will want to rename the link after you put it on your browser) Then, when you are visiting a site that you’d like to subscribe to, simply click on the bookmark and “My Yahoo” will automatically subscribe you to that site.
(the javascript has only been tested in our environment)
javascript:location.href=’http://e.my.yahoo.com/config/cstore?.opt=content&.url=’+encodeURIComponent(location.href)
I hope it helps.
Pat
I blogged, along with a screenshot, about my inferior service as one of the few “paid” my yahoo accounts over at:
http://thomashawk.com/2004/09/yahoo-treats-their-free-accounts.html
Tom
Just wanted to respond to a few points folks mentioned:
1) some people mentioned having issues adding a particular blog or news search query earlier today. We looked into it and found a potential problem, we fixed it and things seemed to be working better this afternoon (check it out if you had problems)
2) Cliff, you asked about personalized feeds. We definately do not share any private info. however some sites publish more tailored feeds (like my Furl archive). This does appear in our search index, but we’ve been working with companies that do this sort of thing to hide their feeds if that’s what users prefer. There are some longer term solutions that I’d love to see happen, but for now we’re keeping a close eye on this one.
3) Last point for Tom and others. You are right that the SBC Yahoo! home page is not offering the beta features right now. As with any beta product, there may be issues to work through and our partners and folks here work together to figure out when they think is best to let their users have the release. I can say that they are working on making the SBC product the best they can and it will arrive within the coming weeks.
While Yahoo! is “looking at” offering paid SBC/Yahoo services the same level of product as their free service, how about removing the add bar that runs at the top of my SBC/my Yahoo! page that wasn’t there back when I was a free customer.
Seems ironic that if I pay you money I get an add banner at the top but if I use the free service I don’t.
Very nice changes. The server is getting better and better. How about a feed with search results made in yahoo?
We liked Yahoo’s new My Yahoo so cool (particularly the part where visitors can add the iProceed blog to their My Yahoo page) that we are actively promoting it on our website and in our blog. So keep up the good work. The new features are really neat!
Despite the problems here and there, this feature at Yahoo is to be applauded in my opinion. Although, please, please give it to DSL users ASAP.
For many of the smaller sites that have excellent content in their blogs, the ability to post a My Yahoo button (even from search results!) creates an entirely new stream of access to a high-quality, interactive visitor. Thanks for taking RSS mainstream, Yahoo! It’s about time.
Scott,
The rest of my feedback is on the way – I wrote a pretty detailed wish list. :)
Moving the page selection to the pop-up list not only doesn’t work with Firefox 1.0PR, it also prevents being able to right click (or other click combinations) on one of the pages.
Any chance we can get this returned to the way it was?
What’s the status of solving the Firefox 1.0PR interaction problem?
John,
We’re definately aware of the issues when two betas collide ;) We’re working with the firefox gang – they are fixing a few bugs they had that’ll make this a lot better (and I’ve been told that some of the nightly builds already work better than 1.0PR). Additionally, we’ve made some changes on our end that should go live later this week that also should help. Browser compatibility is important to us (Firefox, Safari, Opera, Konqueror, WebTV should all be improved in our release this week), but its one of those things that takes more time than anyone would like.
Is the new Beta Version the reason my text is so huge? Everything I’ve tried to fix it does not work.
Please Advise,
KLM
Select page works in Firefox 1.0 PR with no new version of Firefox. I guess you figured out a way to adjust the My Yahoo select page to work with the new Firefox. Thanks!
However, even with select page now working, I still can’t right click (or any other click combination) since it is a pop-up selection instead of a clickable link. Can we at least have an option for which interface we get so that those of us who like to open our additional pages in new tabs can still do this easily?
Thank you for your interest in the new My Yahoo!
Unfortunately, we are unable to update your page at this time. We will post an announcement on your page when it is ready to be updated. In the meantime, thanks for using My Yahoo!
The My Yahoo! Team
Oh why can’t I play too?
How do I revert back to the old my.yahoo? I don’t like it.
I have a large my.Yahoo page, and I find that the beta is CLUNKY and slow, it’s not zippy like the original which is why i LOVE the original so much.
I’ve always thought that one of the reasons Yahoo and Google are so successfull is that they don’t bog down pages with lots of crap. The pages are usually sparse, and quick to download. This new beta is like molasses.
I wanna go back!
When I try to add a feed to My Yahoo, the feed is often not found. This doesn’t seem to be a problem with the feeds, though, because often if I try several times, the feed will finally be “found” by MyYahoo and added.
Ted, we aware of this problem. It seems to happen intermittently and only for feeds that have never been added to our database. If you try again after a few minutes it will usually correct itself. Thanks for pointing it out and know that we are on it.
I also get the following message when trying to update my page to beta. What gives?
Thank you for your interest in the new My Yahoo!
Unfortunately, we are unable to update your page at this time. We will post an announcement on your page when it is ready to be updated. In the meantime, thanks for using My Yahoo!
The My Yahoo! Team
I HATE this new look and want to go back to the old. I especially want my links (news, business, etc) across the top of the page so I don’t have the extra step of clicking a drop-down each time.
HOW DO I GO BACK????
I don’t like the new My Yahoo – and I would like to go back to the old one. How do I convert my yahoo profile back to the old format ?
Well, after I went and changed to the beta version. It looked great. The next day I went and everything was fine, went to another web site then opened my Yahoo Messenger. Well now when I try to open My Yahoo page the following comes up. I do as asked even though when I do what is described it was already set to Yahoo U.S. English. I still press finished and I still cannot open MY Yahoo page. Help!
http://e.my.yahoo.com/config/badver?.src=my&.intl=us&.partner=.partner=gtw&
We’re sorry, but the new version of My Yahoo! is not yet available in any language other than English. You can return to your current page by following these steps:
Select “My Account” to go to the Account Preferences page
Select the “Edit” button in the Member Information section
Under General Preferences, select the link next to “Language & Content”
Choose “Yahoo! US” and then select the “Finished” button
We apologize for the inconvenience. The new version of My Yahoo! will be available in multiple languages soon.
The My Yahoo! Team
Tina,
please check your page again today, everything should be back to normal.
All is working again. Thanks. Any idea if it was Yahoo Messenger that messed it up? I like the extra features and enjoy the new look. I just hope it doesn’t happen again. I always start all my web surfing with My Yahoo page.
How do I go back to the original my.yahoo?
I posted earlier on this blog (oct 15), and I’ve sent numerous emails to Yahoo customer support, but not a single response. I’d think they’d put a simple link in there to revert back to the original, kind of like a “classic skin.”
Please, if anyone knows how to undo, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.
I too have emailed Yahoo asking them how to go back to the old version. The link that I clicked on to install the new Beta version said “TRY”. I assumed that meant I could try it.
I have seen this same question asked here several times and the Yahoo team folks seem to be totally ignoring it as they do my email. At least give some reply bit dont just answer all other questions and ignore this one. HOW DO I GO BACK TO THE OLD VERSION??????????
What’s the deal with not being able to unsubscribe from the “beta” interface?
The new pages don’t play nice with Firefox (1.0 final) and I can’t find any way to go back to the old interface.
Multiple attempts to contact Yahoo support – but no response. Looking at the comments, that seems to be the norm.
I just don’t understand the logic behind calling something a beta and then not providing any mechanism for feedback at all!
I would like to go back to the original My Yahoo! like many others on here. I don’t like the beta version like I did the old. Please give us an answer.
how do you set refresh rate for the new Yahoo. The links/button it says to go to does not exist??Any help
I’m getting disappointed that Yahoo is ignoring our requests to go back to the original my.Yahoo. I’ve been using it for close to 10 years and have encouraged dozens, if not hundreds, of other people to use it as well. I even subscribe to premium real time quotes. I don’t like how they’re treating us. Bad customer service. It’s starting to make me hope that Google comes out with something closer to the old my.yahoo that I can switch to. In the meantime, if anyone knows a substitute close to the old my.yahoo, please post it here.
Hello all,
We haven’t made a lot of noise about this but My Yahoo is no longer considered Beta. We’ll be changing the main “guest” page in the next few days.
My Yahoo users are some of our most valuable users, so we’ve worked to make this transition smooth while adding all the powerful features people have asked for. Millions of users have already upgraded and given us lots of good feedback telling us that it was good to go. (including users on various Browsers like Firefox, Konqueror, Opera and of course IE).
We’re always looking for specific feedback, which you can post here on the blog or better yet here:
http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/my/cgi_beta?from_url=http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000027.html
We still meet daily to review bugs/requests that come in and work to improve the product. I’m very proud that we’ve made substantial improvements along the way. Just read the thread of blog comments to see that we fixed things as the specific feedback came in.
Dear Scott,
How come you haven’t answered our questions from those of us who don’t want to move to the new my.Yahoo?
Why not offer something like a “classic skin”?
Thanks,
Mark
I agree with everyone above stating that the All-New My Yahoo sucks! I’ve issued many comments to Yahoo Customer Service about the beta version, and not once did they acknowledge and correct what I submitted. Customer Service at Yahoo sucks as well. There’s no phone number you can reach them at, nor do they personalize their answers. It all comes from a “can.” Mmm… I think it’s time to sell my Yahoo stock (Symbol: YHOO). I predict Summer 2005 will be a bad period for Yahoo.
WTF is wrong with Yahoo help? I too want to go back, and I notice the screaming LACK of an answer.
I want to get rid of the virus known as “The New Yahoo.” I want to switch back to the old one. The new one S-U-C-K-S and shouldn’t be foisted off on people ’til you people fix all the trouble it’s causing.
Oh, by the way, ANSWER somebody how ’bout it?
Apparently, Scott Gatz is an automaton that’s designed specifically to ignore anything negative about Yahoo’s “new improved” hackwork beta.
To anyone looking for, you know CUSTOMER CARE or anyone at Yahoo to actually give a rat’s behind, forget it!
Just realize that “You have been assimilated.” Yahoo’s ’screw you’ attitude has got me going to Google.
Bye Ya-Suck!
I absolutely HATE the new format. What arrogance, of Yahoo, to impose this on people, and what’s more, to IGNORE people’s requests for an answer. Oh, maybe they figure we will shut up and go away.
Count me as another new format My Yahoo hater. I desperately want to go back to the old version. I have emailed Yahoo several times, but like the posters above have received nothing in return. Should I not be able to revert to the old version, I will replace Yahoo as my home page altogether. Pfffffffffft
I need help with my messenger, i cannot log in from my desk top…why?? please advise
Starting about three days ago, My Yahoo suddenly doesn’t refresh properly in Safari. All I get is a blank page!! What a bummer, I have my page very customized and depend on it a great deal.
HELP?
update