It’s been a rough week, especially for those of us who grew up in the 1970s. First, we lost Ed McMahon, who we always hoped would show up at our doorstep with a big check. Then, came news of Farrah Fawcett, who always got the bad guy and launched a hair revolution among us. But it was the shocking news (confirmed, then unconfirmed, then finally confirmed) of Michael Jackson’s death that rattled the online world the most.

The passing of the King of Pop set multiple records across Yahoo!. On our front page, the story “Michael Jackson rushed to hospital” was the highest clicking story in our history. It generated a whopping 800,000 clicks within 10 minutes and news of his death saw 560,000 clicks in 10 minutes. Also, the news area on our front page experienced five times the amount of traffic it normally receives.

Yahoo! News set an all-time record in unique visitors with 16.4 million people, surpassing our previous record of 15.1 million visitors on election day. Four million people visited the site between 3-4pm Pacific time, setting an hourly record. We also recorded 175 million page views yesterday, our fourth highest after Inauguration Day, the day after the Inauguration, and Hurricane Ike.

In Yahoo! Music, a staggering 21,000 people left comments on a blog post about the music legend. And over on Flickr, more than 4,000 Michael Jackson-related images have been posted in the last day, including art images labeled as “in tribute” and photos of spontaneous memorials all over the world, such as this Thriller “flashdance” in San Francisco.

Also, here’s a behind-the-scenes look at our search logs, revealing what our users were most curious about as they tried to reconcile the news:

• Michael Jackson - including variations of his name and nicknames
• Photos - especially for photos of his face and how it changed throughout the years; also, searches for “plastic surgery“
• Videos - both videos of Michael Jackson and his music videos
• Music - Jackson Five music and his solo work; also searches for his albums and songs
• Songs - including lyrics, especially for hits like Thriller, Man in the Mirror, Billy Jean, and PYT
• Questions - “did Michael Jackson die?”, “who is Michael Jackson?” (!!), “when did Michael Jackson die?”, “why did Michael Jackson die?”
• Cardiac arrest - and other medical terms mentioned in the news
• People - lots of searches for Jackson family members; notable friends like Quincy Jones, Elizabeth Taylor, his lawyer; ex-wives Debbie Rowe and Lisa Marie Presley; and his children
• Elvis Presley - not just because of the Lisa Marie connection, but people want to know how old Elvis was when he died
• Places - Holmby Hills, UCLA Medical Center, Encino, and his house location
• Hoax rumors - given that TMZ.com was the first to confirm his death, people wondered if it was all true. Then came rumors of Harrison Ford and Jeff Goldblum’s deaths.
• RIP Michael Jackson - was very prominent in Twitter
• Drugs - for the pain killer Demerol and other variations/spellings
• Celebrity death in threes - because apparently people are superstitious
• How to moonwalk - because nobody did it better

And that’s just from yesterday…

Michael Jackson’s death was clearly a seminal event. And unlike in the 1970s, we all have a remarkable tool that brings the world together — informed and connected — over those “I remember when…” moments.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Image from thechorompys

Do you own your own business and wish you could run banner ads online?

Beginning today, with the launch of Yahoo! My Display Ads, businesses of all sizes can easily launch display advertising campaigns on Yahoo! to reach the targeted audiences that matter to them most. The new solution is an easy and affordable way to create and run display ads on Yahoo! – even without a major ad budget. In fact, a campaign can cost you as little as $30 per day.

So, how does it work?

Let’s say you own a local boutique shop and you want to reach local-area women. With Yahoo! My Display Ads, you can build a customized ad campaign in a matter of minutes. First, choose from our more than 800 ad templates (organized by business category) and customize the text, images, colors and add your company logo —no design expertise necessary. Then, set your budget and decide who you want to target — by Yahoo! channel content, age, demographics, and location. For example, you could target females between the age of 18-24 in your city. (Keep in mind, though, that the more you target, the less potential traffic you may receive. We recommend starting broad and working your way smaller.) You can even decide whether you want to pay by how many times your ad was viewed or by how often it was clicked on. Finally, we give you daily reports on how ads are performing and let you easily adjust your campaign on the fly.

We partnered with Seattle-based AdReady to develop this service, marking the first time that businesses with ad budgets of all sizes can reach localized portions of Yahoo!’s 165 million users in the U.S. with targeted display ads. To learn more, check out mydisplayads.yahoo.com and get started!

Amanda Reierson
Director, B2B Marketing

Yahoo! Toolbar has always made navigating the web easier –- acting as a shortcut to search and as a way to keep track of your favorite Yahoo! sites. While that still holds true, we have noticed that people want more functionality from their toolbar, so today we are excited to share a new Yahoo! Toolbar –- one that makes it easier to stay on top of your online world no matter where you are on the web.

The new Yahoo! Toolbar now offers greater customization and more immediate access to the information you care about most from across the entire web – not just Yahoo! sites. Currently available if you’re using Internet Explorer 6+ and now for Firefox (as a beta), too, our new toolbar also helps you do some really handy things, including:

• Preview and Go: Most of us have sites we check every day –- sometimes more than once. Now you can preview information from your favorite sites directly within your toolbar. Small previews drop down from your toolbar, giving you real-time information without ever having to leave the page you’re on. Customize your toolbar with dozens of apps from Yahoo! and across the rest of the web, so you can check on your multiple email inboxes (Yahoo! and AOL), your eBay listings, the latest news from People.com or USA Today, stock portfolios, and even your local weather or movie showtimes.
• Search Faster: One of the most popular features on toolbars is search. So, we’ve created a better, more efficient way for you to conduct web searches (with the help of some cool technology from Inquisitor). The search box in your Yahoo! Toolbar now offers query suggestions, recall of sites based on your recent search history, and the ability to directly search other web sites, like Flickr and Wikipedia — right from the search box. It’s a real time saver!

By bringing the best of the web together in one place, we want to make the web work better for you – right from within your toolbar. Get started by downloading the new Yahoo! Toolbar at http://toolbar.yahoo.com/.

Burke Culligan
Senior Director, Yahoo! Front Doors

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!

Want to know what’s buzzing in Bangalore or Bollywood? Now you can, because Yahoo! Buzz is launching in India today, making it the first international version of the Web’s most visited social content service. Now, people throughout India can help bring the most buzz-worthy stories to Yahoo! India and beyond.

Today, Yahoo! Buzz in India is starting off with more than two dozen featured Indian publishers and we look forward to welcoming many more in the coming weeks and months. Since Yahoo! Buzz launched in the U.S. just over a year ago, more than 20,000 publishers from around the world have had stories “buzzed up.”

But that’s not all. We are introducing a new look for Yahoo! Buzz overall that more prominently features contributions from the site’s community. With our new “Buzz Updates” tab, we’re making it easier to follow the submitting, voting, and commenting activity of your friends and the larger Yahoo! Buzz community. And, you’ll also find it’s faster and simpler than ever to share the stories and videos you find most interesting, since we now automatically fill in the story headline and description when you submit a URL.

Take a look at the new Yahoo! Buzz:

And here’s the new Yahoo! Buzz in India:

Stay tuned for more about what’s next for Yahoo! Buzz, and in the meantime, keep buzzing and helping people find the most remarkable stories from across the Web.

Julie Demsey
Senior Director, Product Management, Yahoo! Buzz

We’ve all been there. At one point of another, we’ve all signed up for an online site or service and, down the road, completely forgotten what information we gave during the registration process. We’ve heard from many of you that making the account recovery process easier at Yahoo! would make you very happy, so we’re modifying the process and adding some new features. Here’s the low-down on the new process and what you can expect.

Starting this week, we’ll be asking you to update your recovery data. Since the information we collected in the past – such as zip codes or birthdays – has increasingly become part of our public persona online, users will be given the option to provide additional information such as an alternate email address and new secret questions of their choice. U.S. users will also have the option to provide a mobile phone number. This updated information will let us help you faster in the event of a future recovery attempt – whether you’ve forgotten your password or your account has been compromised. It also lets us better protect you by creating a recovery process that includes information and questions that only you should be able to complete, with information only you should know.

Our goal is to have all Yahoo! users update this information. We’ll start prompting some users to update their data this week (note: you’ll only see this after you’ve logged in) and will continue reaching out to more and more users over the next several months. If you want to update your information proactively, visit https://edit.yahoo.com/commchannel/manage.

We hope everyone takes advantage of these new features and that, in the event you do forget your Yahoo! details, you find the recovery process as quick and painless as possible.

UPDATE: We’ve gotten some questions about how exactly you’ll be notified to update your account recovery information. You will NOT receive an email from us, but rather be prompted with a screen after you log in to your account. That said, you will receive an email from us to your Yahoo! and your alternate email address every time you update your data (ie, a new secret question). Please be mindful of any phishing attempts — emails that appear to be from Yahoo! but are not. You can read more about phishing and account security at our Yahoo! Security Center.

Sabari Devadoss
Platforms Product Manager, Yahoo! Membership

Photo from fragglerawker_03

You might notice some really familiar names on Yahoo! Music starting today. No, not classic musicians. Names like YouTube, Pandora, Last.fm, Rhapsody, Amazon, Ticketmaster, and iTunes. That’s because we’re turning Yahoo! inside out and opening it up to what we think are the best music services online.

We’ve been evolving our approach to music for the last year or so. We found that our subscription music offering required a huge amount of resources for a relatively small user base, leading to our partnership with Rhapsody. And new royalty rates made us to rethink our streaming radio service, which is now run by CBS. Through all of these tough decisions as the industry evolved, the biggest constant has been our core music offering, which connects music fans to their favorite musicians. We said, “Why compete with everyone, fighting on all fronts, if we can just move up a layer and be a resource to our users?”

So now we can be all things to all music people with a little help from our industry friends. The new Yahoo! Music Artist Pages now bring together downloads from iTunes, albums from Amazon; streams from Pandora, Last.fm and Rhapsody; music videos from YouTube; and tickets from Ticketmaster – for more than 500,000 artists. We also include photos from Flickr as well as our own Yahoo! music videos. You can customize your Artist Pages to include your favorite content modules. Previously a closed service with proprietary licensed content, this is the first major effort by any online music site to truly open itself up to third-party services.

And we’ll soon open up our site to developers so that any music service can build an application to host in our gallery. And eventually artists will be able to directly publish content to our site – so fans can keep tabs on their latest blog posts, photos, music videos, live recordings, etc.

The ultimate goal is help you discover, experience, and consume your favorite music online as easily as possible. So go out there and enjoy the music.

Michael Spiegelman
Head of Yahoo! Music

I love it when you run into friends on the street. You don’t have to make plans. You don’t have to get organized. You just get to catch up with each other and chat. And it’s even better when running into someone on the street turns into an excuse for a coffee, or a drink, or a meal.

So what if you could make those kinds of little events happen more often? Wouldn’t it be great if — when you were sitting at home or in your office — you could see your friends in the neighborhood? Maybe you could even see if one of them was interested in finding a snack for lunch!

Yahoo! has a way for you to do just that. We’ve made an application called Friends on Fire that brings together Facebook and our Fire Eagle project to help you quickly and easily share your location with your trusted friends. And you can post little messages on the map, too, to recommend bars or restaurants, or to suggest meeting up for a beer!

We like to describe Fire Eagle as a place to store information about your location. You can get your location into Fire Eagle by using all kinds of different Fire Eagle updaters — from iPhones to websites. And then — if you want — you can choose to share your location with all kinds of applications all over the Internet. There are over 70 different applications in our gallery at the moment, and more appearing every day. We also give you control over how much you choose to share with these different applications. You can choose to share your cross-street or your country, you can hide yourself from everyone, and, of course, you can change your preferences at any time.

In addition to Friends on Fire, we’re also launching a new way to update Fire Eagle — a Firefox extension that adds a button to your toolbar. With one click, your location is instantly shared with your trusted friends on your favorite services.

And finally, for the developers among us, we have three new announcements that you can read about over on the Yahoo! Developer Network blog.

In the meantime, we hope to see you guys trying out the Facebook app! And don’t hesitate to let us know what you think about it — we love to get your feedback.

Tom Coates
Head of Fire Eagle

Last July, we announced an exclusive partnership between Flickr and Getty Images to form The Flickr Collection on gettyimages.com and offer a new kind of creative imagery collection for licensing. Today, we’re ready to debut the collection to the world.

First and foremost, we want to say congratulations to our members — this is truly a testament to their great work. Our community of more than 35 million members from all over the globe continue to amaze us with the authentic and individualistic images that they see in their daily lives and share on Flickr.

For the past few months, editors at Getty Images have been busy exploring the Flickrverse to find the right photos to be part of the collection – a task that is somewhat daunting when there are more than three billion images to choose from on Flickr. The goal was to choose photos that created a commercially viable collection, while preserving the inspirational and unexpected nature of the kinds of images that are so prevalent on Flickr. Like Flickr itself, this is a “living collection” and Getty Images will continue to add thousands of new images every month from here on out.

We see this as an exciting moment that’s breaking new ground for our members around the world, as well as the larger imagery industry. So what are you waiting for — start exploring the first set of photos on gettyimages.com/flickr.

Kakul Srivastava
Flickr General Manager

Photos courtesy of Flickr Collection/Getty Images

Last year, we introduced video to the Flickr community, allowing Pro members to upload 90-second video clips or, “long photos” as we (and others) like to say. Since then, our Pro community has helped define what video on Flickr looks like. It’s authentic and personal –- and it’s like nothing else on the web.

Today we have some exciting enhancements related to video on Flickr to announce:

• Video for All Members: We want to see what the rest of the community has to share, so we are extending the ability to upload video to all of our members. Free members can upload two videos per month, in addition to the 100MB monthly photo upload limit that’s already in place. Video, like photos, is quickly moving beyond a means to simply preserve memories and into a social activity that allows people to communicate and connect. As more devices have the ability to capture both, we’re seeing Flickr members capture videos along with photos to share their view of the world.
• Flickr in HD: Another trend that we’ve noticed is the growing appetite for higher-quality video. With the recent introduction of Nikon’s D90, Canon’s EOS 5D Mark II, Flip Mino HD, and others, it’s even easier to shoot videos in HD. Because our focus has always been on allowing our members to showcase their vision in the best way possible, we’re also enabling HD video uploading and viewing today. Only Pro members can upload videos in HD, but our entire community will benefit by being able to view high quality videos.
• Flickr Clock: All of us at Flickr love creative ways of exploring and visualizing imagery, and Flickr Clock is a new way that we want to celebrate and showcase the amazing video across the Flickrverse. Through Flickr Clock, members will be able to share their vision of what’s happening at any given minute around the world. We’ll be able to display these videos according to the approximate time that they were taken, so you can see what’s happening at different moments in time. Please help us build it into something truly unique and upload your best videos here.

It’s been truly amazing to see how creative our members can get using this medium – check out some of my favorite groups: My Day Yesterday, Timelapse Videos and Video! Video! Video!

And as with the rest of Flickr, we are continuing to evolve the video experience to make it more compelling, accessible and easy to use. So grab your cameras, and capture and share “long photos” of your own!

Here’s an HD demo from a fellow Flickrite’s commute to work:

Kakul Srivastava
Flickr General Manager