One hundred million people. It’s the population of America’s 60 largest cities combined (from NYC to Toledo). It’s about three million more than the size of this year’s record-breaking Super Bowl audience. And it’s the number of people who visit the Yahoo! Homepage every month.

I’ve always wondered what it’s like to program news content for that kind of a massive audience. (Let’s just say Yodel Anecdotal’s readership has a ways to go.) After all, you’re basically responsible for informing roughly one in every two American Internet users about what’s happening in our world…and influencing what they talk about over cube walls. What does that responsibility feel like? How do they stay on top of the fire hose of news and then decide what gets one of those precious links? Who is “they” and what prepares them for this big job? How do they know what will click? What was it like to cover this year’s Election?

I took a camera backstage to answer these questions and more. Enjoy this up-close-and-personal look inside the Yahoo! Homepage newsroom.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Filmed and edited by Bart Bishoff, Yahoo! Broadcast Bureau

Thirty-nine years ago today, the Cardinals and Bruins set aside all rivalry when computer scientists at Stanford and UCLA created the first permanent link between their two shiny new ARPAnet routers — paving the way for modern networked computing and eventually the means for all of your tweets, pokes, LOLcats, and smileys. Here’s what we hooked you up with this week:

• T-Mobile triumph: If you’re a T-Mobile subscriber in the U.S., you’ll be spending a whole lot less time trying to find things with your mobile phone. That’s because Yahoo! oneSearch is now the default mobile search for T-Mobile’s new web2go service, serving up search results designed specifically for your cell phone. After all, it’s an awfully small screen and wading through a sea of links is downright irritating. More here.
• Sticky search: Faithful Product Pulse readers will remember when we unveiled Glue Pages in India, an experimental concept for search that sticks text, images, and video content together into a single results page. It’s now a U.S. import, available as a slightly different experience as Yahoo! Glue beta. It assembles content from across the Web into a veritable microsite about your query. Topics are limited for now (we’ll expand over time), but go check out how it handles popular people, places and things like cupcakes, Sarah Palin, Twilight, and Citigroup. More here.
• Feel-good news: Recession, deflation, layoffs, bank meltdowns. C’mon, isn’t there some good news out there? Why, yes, there is. And the good people at Sears want to make sure you see it. Head to Good News Now, a new video channel on Yahoo! News that sees the world through rose-colored glasses — spotlighting strictly uplifting stories in the news. You’ll find profiles of heroes, medical triumphs, baby Obamas, charitable neighbors, natural disaster survivors, and more. The channel will run through New Year’s. Maybe headlines will improve by January?
• Britney, Britney, Britney: Whether you’re a tabloid subscriber or just read copies at the dentist’s office, you’re all too familiar with the world’s fascination with Britney Spears. Well, the volume increases on Monday, when Yahoo! TV will premiere the exclusive trailer of MTV’s upcoming documentary, “Britney: For the Record.” Then we’ll spend the rest of the week gearing you up for Britney’s 27th birthday and the release of her new album “Circus” on December 2, with special coverage across Yahoo!. On Monday, check out “Britney’s 27 Wildest Moments” on Yahoo! Music; Friday, omg will share “Britney’s 25 Most Memorable Looks;” and next Sunday, Shine will take a look at Brit’s relationships. Mark your calendar!
• Big time in no time: And a final note… I’d like to congratulate the team behind Primetime in No Time, the show that gives you a rapid-fire recap of the TV you missed the night before. They’ve just served their 100 millionth stream since launching in March, becoming one of the most successful original programs in the history of the Internet. Hosted by comedian Frank Nicotero, the show is clearly addictive. w00t! More here.

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As many of you know, we’ve been testing a new Yahoo.com homepage since September. We chose a random fraction from our millions of users in four countries to play around with the new homepage and give us feedback on the new features.

As expected, we’ve gotten a wide range of reactions from our testers -– the good, the bad, and the ugly. We’ve heard every word and have made some changes accordingly. For example, in the latest version, we’ve added a Mail link to the “Yahoo! Services” area so that people can get to their email faster. We’ll keep making changes and updates like this throughout the testing phase, with the goal of making this new homepage the ideal starting point for everything people want to do on the Internet, whether it’s on or off Yahoo!.

On that note, I want to highlight a great new application that we’ve just added to the homepage test. Demonstrating how we’re opening our homepage to third-parties to make your life simpler, we’re adding a new eBay application to the “My Applications” dashboard area. It will provide an “eBay Anywhere” experience, letting people quickly monitor their eBay buying and selling activities, including checking recent bids or getting reminders about auctions that are about to close. They can also as search for and find new eBay items right from within Yahoo.com. You can read more about it on Ebay’s blog here.

We’ve pulled together this screencast to introduce you to the new eBay app, and take you on a tour of the newest version of the Yahoo! homepage test. It might also satisfy the curiosity of those of you who haven’t yet had a chance to play around with the new site.

If you’re in one of our test groups, we really rely on your feedback and hope you know how important you are in helping us build the best possible site. We’ll keep testing until we think we’ve got it right. So keep the feedback coming!

Tapan Bhat
Senior Vice President, Yahoo! Front Doors, Communities and Network Services

About two years ago, a life-changing experience occurred during one of the most mundane chores of a new mom: washing baby bottles. I was frustrated that my soap wasn’t really removing the milk odor or residue. I also wondered what the harsh chemicals might be doing to my daughter. The idea for a business was born.

Now I’m co-owner of Dapple, purveyor of the first line of environmentally-friendly products that deal with baby-specific cleaning challenges. And thanks to Yahoo! Small Business, our business is skyrocketing –- even in the current economic climate.

In March, on a whim, my partner Tamar Rosenthal and I applied to Yahoo! Small Business and fwm’s “Seeds for Success” grant program and were later named one of the three finalists chosen from among 5,500 entrepreneurs. Over the last six months, we competed for the grand prize by working toward milestones with our website, sales, partnerships, PR and marketing, and more. More than 660,000 people recently cast their votes on Yahoo!. And lo and behold, we won!

It’s wild to think that just six months ago, we had no products on shelves, no retail presence. Just a few prototypes and a lot of hope. After we earned Yahoo!’s grant of $25,000 in cash and services, it was the perfect storm. We were able to produce our first two products, found small retailers in our New York City neighborhood willing to be our first test market, and built our web site. I can’t describe the kind of endless credibility the Yahoo! name gave us. We later struck deals with two major national retailers, attended trade shows, won an iParenting Media Award for best product, and got a lot of great attention from mommy bloggers. We’ve sold more than 25,000 units to date, have distribution in 300 stores and strong interest from big national chains, and now have six products in our line.

As part of our prize, we got mentoring advice from some really legendary figures through fwm (Finding What Matters). For example, fwm’s Carolyn Kepcher, of “The Apprentice” fame and Yahoo!’s program co-sponsor, helped us shore up our business plan while being a great sounding board. Cathie Black, president of Hearst Magazines, taught us about breaking through closed doors “in a ladylike way” but never giving up. Brand guru David Vinjamuri helped us create thoughtful packaging (e.g., pump dispensers are far more convenient for harried moms) and branding that resonated with our customers. Beauty maven Bobbi Brown gave tips about carefully growing our business. And Scott Smigler from Yahoo! partner Exclusive Concepts helped us recognize how important a successful Web site is as part of the mix and was amazing in revamping our Yahoo! Small Business Web site.

We’ve experienced many ups and downs in our journey and we’re often humbled by the hard work and dedication of other passionate entrepreneurs. If you’re on the edge of jumping in and think you have a great idea with a lot of promise, we say “go for it!” But put on your seatbelt and hang on –- the ride is incredible. As for Dapple, we plan to use our grand prize winnings to bring you even more baby-friendly cleansing products in the near future.

Dana Rubinstein
Co-Founder, Dapple

As you’ve no doubt already read, I’ve decided that I will step down from my role as Chief Executive Officer after my successor has been selected.

Ever since founding Yahoo! with David Filo 13 years ago, I’ve been passionate about this company, its brand, its employees, and the millions of people around the world who consider it their online home. That’s why I accepted the Board’s request to become CEO in June 2007, taking on the challenge of transforming Yahoo! at a time when the industry was evolving quickly and we needed to rethink and restructure our business.

And despite the tough external environment that we face, I truly believe we’ve made tangible progress in bringing our strategic vision to life. Most significantly, we’ve rewired our entire network to create a Yahoo! that has opened its doors to outside publishers and developers. We’ve launched an advertising platform that we think will transform how ads are bought and sold online. And we’ve continued to grow our audience –- standing first or second in more than 20 product categories and demonstrating that Yahoo! is the place users turn for major events like the Olympics and the Elections.

And now I believe the time is right for us to bring in a new leader –- someone who will build on the important pillars we’ve put in place and who will take the reins on the critical decisions our company faces. As for me, I’ll be returning to my role as Chief Yahoo and board member once my successor is named. I’ll go back to focusing on our global strategy, product excellence, technology innovation, and working with the Board and our executive team to help Yahoo! realize its full potential.

It’s been an extraordinary year here at Yahoo! –- for all of us. I’m really proud of the determination and resilience of Yahoos around the world who are so committed to giving you the best Internet experience possible. It is for them, and for you, that I will always bleed purple.

Jerry Yang
Chief Yahoo and CEO

Today in 1857, a dude named Ishmael made it perfectly clear what he wanted to be called. And so was born Moby Dick, one of the greatest novels of our time — about a wandering sailor, a tyrannical captain, a scheming whale, and a popular coffeeshop that can be found on virtually every corner. Oh, wait, that came later. Here’s what was epic around here this week:

• Steals and deals: OK, so you’ve lost 40% of your 401K in the last month. Doesn’t mean you have to join the Grinch in denying everyone of Who-hash and roast beast, does it? Yahoo! Shopping will help your heart grow a few sizes with its new Yahoo! Deals site. There you’ll find exclusive daily deals, online coupons for thousands of big-name retailers (you can even save them for later), discount codes for all kinds of storewide sales, and virtual weekly circulars for those who insist on subjecting themselves to holiday crowds. Because at least being thrifty is better than having the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile, right? More here.
• Calendar progression: The new Yahoo! Calendar Beta debuted a month ago and it’s already got a “new and improved” sticker. The team just released an update that addresses the most frequently reported issues, tunes up performance, and lets you switch back and forth between Classic Calendar and the beta. And they’re already hard at work on the next batch of features, including the top-rated requests from users via the Yahoo Calendar Suggestion Board. So weigh in if you want to get your feature on the roadmap.
• Venerable veterans: If you missed your chance to honor a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine (American and otherwise) for Veterans Day (which this year coincided with the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day, or the end of WWI), head over to the the Commons collection on Flickr to peruse its two newest members, the Australian War Memorial and the Imperial War Museum. Then check out all the photos tagged with Armistice Day for a fascinating look at the Great War. More here.

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November 1 was an uneventful day for most people. But at Yahoo! News, editors had gathered in the newsroom on a sleepy Saturday morning to rehearse Election Night for a third and final time. Everyone was geared up for a prescribed role – following election calls by the Associated Press, mapping results as states rolled in, coordinating headlines with the homepage team, cranking out posts for our elections blog. A mock network commentator addressed the group, quickly shouting out poll results for 16 states coming in all at once. Everyone flew into action, processing swing and big-prize states and anticipating the top headlines.

In contrast to breaking news, it’s a luxury to prepare for a massive news event that falls on the calendar. And like a Guitar Hero tournament, we notched up the intensity the further we went along in the rehearsal. The goal? To create a setting as dramatic as Wolf Blitzer’s call of states on CNN to ensure that everyone was as prepared as possible to program what proved to be an historic night.

After covering the 2000 and 2004 elections at the New York Times, and watching news organizations all over the country make premature (and wrong) calls, I had just one rule for our team: “Get it right.” When you are the de facto news source for over 40 million a month, you feel a tremendous responsibility when it comes to accuracy.

To strike the right balance of keeping up with network calls without distributing misinformation, we spent time with editors from the AP before the election to understand their approach toward calling results, which is part science, part art, part gut call. You might remember the AP was the only news outlet that sent Americans to bed without a new president in 2000, saying the race was too close to call.

At Yahoo! News, our editors’ roles are to program headlines from dozens of national and international newspapers, wires, and broadcast networks. But on Election Night, we took on a more pronounced mandate as news filter. For example, if a network called a critical swing state, we would wait until at least another network called the state before announcing the news in our breaking news blog and breaking news bar. After all, we were serving what turned out to a record-breaking audience — today, comScore confirmed that we attracted 7.5 million people, the largest single day of traffic in online news history, surpassing CNN.com, MSNBC.com, AOL.com and FoxNews.com. We couldn’t afford to be wrong.

Journalists are known cynics. But when Barack Obama surpassed 270 electoral votes, we all knew it was a huge moment. The newsroom suddenly got very quiet. The sense of history was palpable. I think we all felt honored to be standing there, passing that word along to our readers.

And in my eight years at the Times — where I covered 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — I was never more proud of a newsroom operation.

Richard Vega
Senior Editor, Yahoo! News

Photo from jrejtman

You may be tightening the belt these days — eating in more often, rediscovering the library, planning a staycation, even making do with that ugly bathroom linoleum. But if there’s one thing you probably won’t skip this year, it’s buying holiday gifts for friends and family.

That’s why Yahoo! Shopping just launched Yahoo! Deals. When we saw the economy slowing over the last few months, we decided to pull together a site designed to help you save money — just in time for holiday shopping.

Retail isn’t all doom and gloom. While total spending may drop this season as consumers guard their net worth, Forrester Research predicts that online shopping will actually rise 12% over last year, mainly because half of online shoppers anticipate that the best values and deals will be found on the Web. And it goes without saying that they’ll also avoid the stress of crowded malls and long lines when they log on in their pajamas.

Our new Yahoo! Deals site will save you both time and money as you scout the best online and offline bargains. Here’s what you’ll find there:

• Daily Deals – Every day, you’ll find new handpicked deals from partners like Woot!, Amazon, Dell, BradsDeals, and dealnews. You’ll find the Woot! Deal of the Day as well as 24-hour steals in categories like Computers & Electronics, Home & Garden, and Clothing & Accessories.
• Coupons – Find online coupons for thousands of retailers like Macys, the Gap, Land’s End, Nike, Apple, and Toys R Us. And if you’re logged in, you can even save a coupon, so you can use it when you’re ready to get your shopping done.
• Storewide Sales – You’ve probably had a friend who circulates an email every year with all kinds of great discount codes. We’ve basically digitized those emails and collected them in all one place. But we have your friend beat, with more than 700 specials and sales.
• Weekly Ads – If you prefer to shop offline, you’ll want to check out our electronic circulars for retailers near your location before you get in the car. You’ll find retailers like Macy’s, Staples, Target, JCPenney, and Lowe’s. And since you’ll be driving, you might want to use our Cheap Gas Finder to get the best price per gallon in your neighborhood.

So regardless of whether you are turning to online shopping because of the economic crisis, or simply because it’s efficient and hassle-free, Yahoo! Deals arrives at the perfect time. And as an online shopping addict, I’m personally excited about the new treasure trove of gift giving possibilities. Here’s to saving even more time and money as we wrap up 2008.

Greg Hintz
General Manager, Yahoo! Shopping

Hack Day met Brazil last weekend — the fifth country (following the US, UK, Taiwan, and India) to host a 24-hour developer hackathon. Latin American hackers descended in droves on Senac University in São Paulo to build great mashups and applications with Yahoo! code.

The winning hacks included creations like a mobile application built on Yahoo! Blueprint that lets you look up government information and laws that apply to the region you’re standing in at that moment, a BOSS hack that lets you find information about your favorite bands, a Flickr app that alerts you when the copyright status of a photo you are using has changed (to keep you out of trouble), a SearchMonkey hack that adds category links in Yahoo! search results for Wikipedia, and a great green hack that lets you track your fuel consumption and mileage via your mobile device.

And while hacking is serious business, there’s always time for comic relief (as fans of Mo Kakwan, hacker-cum-standup-comedian, can attest — he had our Sunnyvale crowd crying with laughter at two consecutive open hacks). For what little sleeping and relaxing there was, the Yahoo! Brazil team provided large purple beanbag “puffs.” And two opportunistic Brazilian hackers decided to make them the centerpiece of a video that showcased 18 highly-inventive uses for said puffs. This included turning them into kayaks, race cars, mechanical bulls, recycling bins, stone circles, TV sets, soccer goals, beer steins, and more. Their puff hackery won them a “”Using the Environment” award. Watch their video here:

Puff Hacking from fczuardi on Vimeo.

For that “just like being there” feeling, check out the brhackday08 Flickr tags and read about it on Twitter (Portuguese recommended). Till the next open hack!

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Fourteen years ago, devotees of WXYC, the college radio station of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, fired up their computers and tuned in to the world’s first radio signal to be broadcast over the Internet. Now about 13 percent of Americans listen to radio online — still well more than those who subscribe to satellite radio. Here’s what we broadcast this week:

• Social buzz: Yahoo! Buzz is the latest to get into the open game. A new Updates section on Yahoo! Buzz lets you keep track of stories that your friends have buzzed up or down. Also new is a “Comments” section for individual stories so that you can weigh in with your own opinion and further the conversation. What’s more, you can give a thumbs up or down to other people’s comments, or reply to them. Lots of opportunity to mouth off! And you’ll find a personal activity hub for each of your contacts (provided they want you to see it) so you can check out their voting and commenting history.
• Take me to your leader: The next POTUS might still have 73 more days before he takes office, but it’s not too early to send him a presidential communique — via photo. The Guardian has set up a Flickr pool for people who want to send personal photo messages to Barack Obama — whether you want him to end the war, fix healthcare, adopt that puppy, or prove you wrong. It’s worth a thousand words.
• Cinco de delicioso: A big happy 5th birthday to the team at Delicious (or Del.icio.us, for you die hards). But that’s not the only number five to be celebrated. They now boast more than 5 million users, all of whom have civic-mindedly saved more than 180 million unique URLs. Cupcakes all around.

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