At the CES, Yahoo announced that it has launched a new mobile home page. Still in early beta, the new website allows users to customize their “Yahoo! experience” more than ever before. You can pick content from various Yahoo’s websites, but also from other leading web properties. The keyword is “dynamic,” meaning that you’ll be able to see such things as the upcoming calendar appointments, status of Yahoo! Messenger contacts, Flickr photos from your friends, recent emails, and more — all on a single page. In addition, users can customize the links at the bottom of the page (Quick Links), so they can quickly visit their other favorite mobile web destinations. Finally, there’s Yahoo’s oneSearch which now includes content from Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers, as well as airline flight status information.
The new Yahoo! mobile homepage is available from “beta.m.yahoo.com” and works on select smartphones, including Apple iPhone, Nokia Symbian S60 and some Windows Mobile devices… Full release follows after the jump.
PRESS RELEASE – Yahoo! today upped the ante in consumer-centric mobile design by launching a new version of the company’s mobile home page in early beta at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2008. Today’s announcement further extends Yahoo!’s mobile leadership by providing consumers with a visually-stunning and easy to navigate interface for the most visited mobile site in the U.S. (M:Metrics, October 2007). By visiting http://beta.m.yahoo.com from select mobile phone browsers, consumers will experience an open and customizable home page where users can personalize their mobile experience like never before, drawing content from the Yahoo! network and leading Web properties from around the Internet.
Yahoo!’s new mobile home page was designed to quickly become the essential starting point for the mobile Internet. Incorporating the best “home page” elements from pioneering PC portals such as My Yahoo! and the Yahoo.com Front Page, it embraces a dynamic, open and highly personalized approach.
“Today we set the standard for what consumers are demanding from the mobile Internet. As the definitive starting point for mobile users around the world, our new home page is beautifully-designed and optimized for the mobile device,” said Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Connected Life, Yahoo!. “As we’ve done before, we’ve set an incredibly high bar for the industry with our innovation and ability to deliver prolific services to millions of global mobile users, helping them discover what a truly compelling mobile Internet experience should be like.”
Simply put, the new mobile interface is stunning, easy to use, relevant and fast. Key features include:
- Personal Vitality and Status Updates – Provide an at-a-glance update of what’s new since the last visit – including recent emails, Flickr photos from your friends, upcoming calendar appointments and status of Yahoo! Messenger contacts – all without moving away from the home screen or logging into a separate application.
- Customizable Content – Offers a collection of mobile content modules known as Yahoo! Snippets that provide previews of the user’s favorite content from any source – news headlines, weather conditions, and more – whatever the user wants.
- Quick Links – Customizable links at the bottom of the page, providing fast access to the Yahoo! services and other sites across the Internet that consumers use the most. Consumers can easily add and remove quick links as they desire.
- oneSearch – Mobile search designed to give instant answers and relevant information by understanding the user’s query intent and optimizing the results accordingly. Recently upgraded to include content from Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers, as well as airline flight status information.
Today the new mobile home page is available to consumers in the United States on numerous mobile devices including the Apple iPhone, several Nokia Series 60 devices and select Windows Mobile devices. Over the coming months, the new interface is expected to become available across additional devices and mobile browsers and also available internationally.