Speed and spam topped the list of what Yahoo was trying to improve in its next version, a beta of which will start rolling out to users Tuesday night. The redesigned version takes inspiration from Yahoo’s iPad and Android clients for the market-leading, Web-based mail service, and not only adds the speed and spam reduction, but also brings Twitter into its fold and, like Microsoft’s updated Hotmail service, can now display photos and videos within users’ inboxes.
David McDowell, Yahoo’s senior director of product management for Yahoo Mail, about the new mail version: “People spend more than 30 billion minutes a month on Yahoo Mail, so if we make a change, it’s significant,” said McDowell. “If you were to stack up users lists of complaints about e-mail, speed and spam would be at the top of the list, and we’ve tackled both head on with this release. Yahoo Mail’s been re-architected from the ground up with speed and performance in mind, and it’s actually two times faster than our existing version—much faster to load and much faster to navigate.”
