Did you know people in the U.S. visit an average of 85 sites per month? That just sounds exhausting. So we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how we can ease the pain of site-hopping to help you do more things at once.

This week, you’ll find a number of new third-party “apps” and “widgets” on Yahoo! Mail, My Yahoo!, Yahoo! Connected TV and Zimbra email to give you quicker access to the things you do online every day – whether planning your dinner menu, sharing photos with friends, or looking for YouTube videos. Below are screenshots and more info on some that we think are especially handy.

Make the Most of Your Inbox
Back in December, we started testing Yahoo! Mail apps that let you do all kinds of new things from your inbox. Today we’re introducing more great options, including:

• PayPal: request or send money securely
• Picnik: edit photos and share photo collages
• Zumo Drive: email files as large as 100MB for free

These apps are only available to a limited number of people during our beta period. Read more about the new Yahoo! Mail apps introduced today, and if you’d like to try it out, click here and enter your Yahoo! ID.

Personalized Productivity on My Yahoo!
We opened up My Yahoo! in December to tap into innovation from third party developers across the Web and give you even more choice for your personalized start page. Some of the new My Yahoo! apps available today include:

• Mint.com: manage your finances, set budgets and get money-saving tips
• Food & Wine Pairing: find recipes, menus, wine reviews and recommended pairings
• Green Lifestyle: grow your green knowledge and help benefit the environment
• WordPress: post to your blog and moderate your recent comments

To add these and other apps to your page, click on any of the links above or go to “Add Content” and look for the “Open Apps” category in the My Yahoo! gallery. These apps are built on the Yahoo! Application Platform, and you can read more about them and many others on the Yahoo! Developer Network blog.

Do More on Your TV
Back in March, we helped raise your TV’s IQ with widgets that can deliver the best of the Internet to your living room. In addition to your favorite Web sites like Flickr, Twitter, USA Today Sports, Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Weather, Internet-enabled TVs from Samsung and LG Electronics (coming soon from Sony and VIZIO) now feature more best-of-the-web Yahoo! TV widgets, including:

• YouTube: search and view YouTube’s massive library of video content on your TV screen
• Showtime: find information, schedules, interviews and short clips from popular Showtime offerings
• eBay (coming soon): get real-time updates, place bids, and monitor your favorite items on eBay

Zimlets Anyone?
Even Yahoo!’s Zimbra (our advanced open-source email & collaboration software) is getting into the mix, introducing a handful of new Zimlets (which integrate new features in email, similar to the Yahoo! Mail applications). Automatically save emails as documents, drop sticky notes on messages, and handle expense reports with one click. More information can be found on the Zimbra blog.

By making Yahoo! more open, we’re able to bring all that is good and useful on the Web even closer to your fingertips. We’re constantly adding new apps, so stay tuned for more.

Tapan Bhat
SVP, Integrated Consumer Experiences, Yahoo!

We recognize that for many of you around the world, the Yahoo! homepage – whether you’re seeing it on a computer or a mobile device – is Yahoo!. And we know you all have vastly different interests and “must-see” places you navigate to online. We can make our homepage better reflect this reality and, as many of you know, we’ve been hard at work on improving both our mobile and Web homepages.

What’s new, you ask?
We recently made the new Yahoo! Mobile (http://m.yahoo.com) available on the mobile Web across more than 300 devices and as an Apple iPhone app – both are available in eight countries, with more launching soon. We’ve moved out of beta and are in the process of rolling it out as our default mobile homepage.

Like the PC homepage we’re testing, the new Yahoo! Mobile has a more feature-rich design, letting you bring together your favorite content and services from across the Web, making it more personally relevant. For example, my experience is customized with my Yahoo! Mail, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo! Messenger accounts, as well as my various stocks, favorite blog feeds, and weather from my favorite cities. The beauty of it is that you can customize the experience to exactly what you want and add anything to the page.

As for the Web, we recently started testing some new designs based on your feedback. We recognize that many of you like your homepage just the way it is, thank-you-very-much, so the overall look and feel of the page will be familiar. But take a closer look, and you’ll see that we’ve made some fundamental improvements and packed in features that are easy to use and easy to make your own – things you have told us you want.

The “My Favorites” area on the left side of the page includes an applications “dashboard” with the ability to preview, interact with or navigate to your favorite sites – whether they’re on Yahoo! or elsewhere on the Web. It’s all fully customizable.

Here’s some of what’s new and cool:

• Lots more apps: We’re testing a growing library of apps that let you get more done without leaving the page. Some of these apps include eBay and MySpace, and content sites like USA Today and NPR. We also have newly developed apps for popular Yahoo! services like Messenger, Movies and Flickr.
• Social pulse: A new Yahoo! Updates app lets you keep up with your friends’ online activities directly on the homepage – such as a recently Buzzed article or a video uploaded to YouTube.
• Easier email: We’ve separated your individual email accounts as distinct apps, rather than a combined inbox, so that it’s faster and easier to get to the exact mail you want. This was a request we heard repeatedly during testing.

What about local personalization?
As a global company, it’s critical that we create localized homepages, and we’re testing them now in France, India and the UK. While we’ll provide a consistent experience across all our global homepages in terms of design, they will be customized with information and apps that are locally relevant. For example, the new homepage in India will include a Cricket app and a whole host of others that are India-centric, while the UK site will include apps such as underground alerts, news from the BBC, and more.

This screenshot shows London Underground alerts from Transport for London:

We’re excited about the new direction of our homepages, especially because you’ve helped us build them. The designs being tested are changing frequently based on your input. Stay tuned for updates in the months ahead as we roll them out more broadly.

Tapan Bhat
SVP, Integrated Consumer Experiences, Yahoo!

As many of you know, we started testing new concepts for the Yahoo! homepage last fall, with the goal of helping to simplify the Web for the more than 300 million people around the world who visit the site each month.

We are wrapping up the first phase of our “bucket testing” and have gleaned some great insights from people in the US, UK, France and India who have tried out the new page. We’ve done a number of things to collect input –- from reading your comments here on Yodel to reviewing online feedback forms and customer care inquires to meeting with many of you in person and online. Bottom line is we’re getting closer to the final design, but we’re not quite there yet.

Before I share details around what we’ve learned, I wanted to give a quick recap of some of the functionality we’ve added over the past few months since just a fraction of you have experienced it firsthand.

Back in September, we introduced a new section called “My Apps.” The great part about having apps on your homepage is that you can easily check in and get more done –- from reading and responding to multiple email accounts to browsing local movie listings –- all without leaving the page.

Today, we’ve enhanced that experience and we’re testing more than 25 apps that will keep you updated with whatever you want to know. New additions include apps from eBay, Forbes.com, Wired.com and more top brands. We’ve also beefed up the Sports and Finance apps, for example, providing schedules, team standings, blogs links and more, plus one-click access to your stock portfolios and stock quotes. The best part is that the “My Apps” section is now customizable so you can add and remove apps (check out this screenshot) so your homepage reflects what matters most to you.

Here’s what we’ve heard from our testers:

Positive Feedback

• People are happy with the streamlined look and feel
• There’s lots of love for the applications
• Most testers said they prefer the new homepage over the current homepage

One comment that sums it up nicely:

“Well — I was surprised at first at how little change was introduced, and liked that. Now I’m surprised by how much change actually is packed in, but is more interaction based… Basically it’s deceptively different — looks and feels the same, but much more functionality built in at a new layer.” - Thomas

What We’re Working On
Now that we’ve got a critical mass of input, we’re translating it into updated versions of the page for ongoing testing. Here are some highlights.

• The #1 thing we’re hearing you want is more apps and we’ll be adding many apps in the coming weeks
• Most didn’t like the dark color that we tested initially — see the screenshot below of the new visual treatments we’re testing
• Easier ways to access and preview email and instant messaging accounts are in the works
• It should be easier to get to other Yahoo! services that you’ve come to rely upon

We don’t take changes to your homepage lightly and your input is critical. To help our designers and engineers, tell us what else you think we should consider. Is there a killer app that you’d love to see?

Know that we’re working hard to create a new homepage that you’ll love and we’ll keep you posted as we get closer to launching. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

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

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

Ever since Jerry and David began categorizing the Web back in 1994, people have visited our homepage to find out what’s happening. That’s 100 million of you in the US and 314 million of you globally starting your day on a Yahoo! homepage, so we must be doing something right. But we’re not resting on our laurels…

We know your life has changed since 1994. Most of us have upgraded from big hair, flannel shirts and Nirvana, much as Yahoo.com has evolved over the years. Today we are challenged with keeping track of everything going on in our lives, in the news, with our family and friends, etc. The Web has evolved to keep us in constant communication, but this also means we are continually receiving emails, text messages, RSS feeds, tweets and IMs. Keeping up can be a struggle.

We’re working on a new homepage that will help you get more out of the Internet, make more of your precious time, and make sense of all the things going on in your world. After lots of ongoing research (i.e., focus groups, usability experiments, etc.), today we’ve begun testing an all-new, more streamlined Yahoo.com that will bring the things that matter most to you –- no matter where they “live” on the Web. Here’s a screenshot of one of the versions we’ll be testing:

Here’s how the new Yahoo.com should simplify your life:

1. One easy check-in point. We’re testing a dashboard area (off to the left) that will let you add previews of your favorite Yahoo! and non-Yahoo! services – starting with checking for new mail from multiple accounts (initially Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail and Gmail, with more to come), weather forecasts, and local events. We plan to add plenty more preview applications in the future, so that you don’t have to spend as much time jumping from site to site just to stay plugged in.
2. Helping you stay informed. We’re always hearing how much people love the “Featured” area of the page, so we’re going to keep enhancing that with more and more fresh, timely content you’re interested in from across the Web. And of course we still have the prominent search box, with Yahoo! Search’s handy “Search Assist” feature. As we continue evolving the test versions, you’ll also notice us adding more information about what your friends are doing across Yahoo! and the Web in general.

What does all this mean to you? Since we’re testing with a fraction of homepage visitors chosen at random – starting in the US, UK, France and India – you may be one of the testers! But even if you’re not, we encourage you to share your thoughts on what you want out of your Internet starting point. Keep in mind that we plan to add lots of exciting new things over the course of these tests, since this process is all about making sure we launch the best page for our users.

We’ll keep you posted as we add new preview applications from your favorite Web sites, create more ways to easily personalize the page so that it’s focused on what matters most to you, and eventually even open it up to the Yahoo! Application Platform so that external developers and publishers can submit their own preview applications to be featured on the Yahoo! homepage.

Tapan Bhat
SVP, Front Doors, Communities and Network Services

P.S. Check out this screenshot for a sneak peek into more features we’ll be adding during the testing process.
P.P.S. Did you notice the color of the logo on our test?

In February, we introduced Yahoo! Buzz as a new way for you to discover, vote for, and share the content and stories that matter most to you. You also got a say in what stories might be read by millions, with the voting power to potentially get your favorite content on the Yahoo! Front Page.

Today, six months and more than 5 million users later, we’re pleased to share that we’re opening Yahoo! Buzz up so that you can “buzz up” content from any publisher on the Web.

We started with about 100 publishing partners, which quickly grew to more than 400. Sites like Salon.com and GigaOm immediately saw an impact as their traffic soared when content climbed up the list and got selected for Yahoo.com. Now that benefit can come to any site online, making it possible to give as much visibility to extraordinary content from an obscure site as major news stories from big publishers.

What does this mean for you? Anything you find on the Web is now buzzable. Any of the Web’s best current event stories, gossip, photos, videos and more can be submitted and shared on Yahoo! Buzz. You’ve already seen the “Buzz Up” buttons on many of your favorite sites, including New York Times, Us Weekly and BoingBoing. Now, as any site is able to add our button, you’ll have even more places to buzz to your heart’s content. And if you don’t see that button on a Web story you just have to share, you can submit a story right on Yahoo! Buzz. Like always, the more unique and compelling the story, the better chance your story of choice will buzz up to the Yahoo! homepage. Nice!

And for anyone publishing Web content that was not part of our beta testing, today we hope you will join Yahoo! Buzz and let our audience (of more then half a billion people!) buzz up your content, too. Joining is as simple. Just grab code from our Buttons page and paste it into your website or blog.

Thank you for continuing to make Yahoo! the place you start your day to find and share the most popular stories and videos on the Internet. We have more to come for Buzz, so stay tuned. But in the meantime: keep on buzzing!

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

P.S. Now that you have a Web full of info to buzz, check out the My Buzz Activity page that allows you to keep track of and share what you’ve buzzed up or down, or what you buzzed before anyone else did.

We’re excited to introduce Yahoo! Buzz, a new way for you to tell us (and the world) what you think is cool, and in the process help make Yahoo.com, the favorite Internet starting point, even better. Yahoo! Buzz uncovers the most interesting and relevant content from websites across the Internet to bring more buzz-worthy stories to the homepage of Yahoo!.

How does this work? You cast your vote on the most interesting Web stories, images or videos about anything and everything – from a late-breaking political story on a major news site, to the coolest photo of the lunar eclipse, to a shocking celebrity gossip blog post that shouldn’t be missed. The best part is that the stories with the highest Buzz Scores – determined by combining your votes with organic search popularity rankings – may be featured on the Yahoo! homepage, giving you the power to influence what millions of people see on Yahoo!.

So whether its the latest Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul banter, the best dressed from the Oscar’s, or a new global report on climate change, tell us what you think is the best of the best on the Web. Make sure to look out for the “Buzz-Up” badges all over Yahoo! and across sites on the Web, or go to buzz.yahoo.com and browse through thousands of stories to vote for your favorites.

Don’t see the “Buzz Up” buttons on your favorite site? Down the road, you’ll be able to submit new things that you think deserve the Buzz, but for now we encourage you to contact the publishers about becoming part of the Buzz network.

And for the publishers reading this, hold tight, as we’ll be opening up Yahoo! Buzz with a new API and syndication and monetization tools just for you. In the meantime get your BUZZ on and start casting your votes!

Tapan Bhat
Vice President of Front Doors and Network Services

Let me start off with a big purple thanks to you, our half a billion users who visit, share, and engage with Yahoo!-branded properties everyday. As you may have read, the new University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction Index results are in and it’s due to your regular feedback that we continue to make strides in customer satisfaction ratings. On that note, we’d like to take this opportunity to look back at some of our product milestones since last summer that were a result of your direct input.

This summer, we’re celebrating the one-year anniversary of our new home page design for Yahoo.com, which was built completely around your suggestions. You wanted to get through your daily routines faster, so we added quick previews of your email, local weather, and traffic. We also updated our featured content to highlight even more of what’s happening around the world, at a glance, so you could bring your a-game to the water cooler.

You wanted more storage on Yahoo! Mail, so we extended unlimited email storage to all users and took it one step further by enhancing speed and performance and adding integration with Yahoo! Messenger. You asked us to make it easier to find what you’re looking for in one search, and as a result we’ve rolled out new enhancements on Yahoo! Search, such as search suggestions that appear as you type into the search box on Yahoo.com, and shortcuts around popular searches like music artists, hotels, restaurants, and Major League Baseball stars.

And we’re not done! In the next week, we’ll be rolling out more broadly a cool new inline video player on the Yahoo! Home Page, so that you can watch videos without leaving the page, see other related videos, and email or IM interesting videos to your friends.

We’re committed to building products you love and making your experience even better on Yahoo!, so please continue to feed us your suggestions and stay tuned for more to come.

Tapan Bhat
Vice President, Front Doors