Second Act from Yahoo! News took home the Reality Webby Award in the Online Film & Video category, edging out nominations from reputable sources such as The Washington Post. If you haven’t checked it out already, Second Act is a Yahoo! Originals show that celebrates real people who discover their passions and reinvent themselves to reach for their dreams. Second Act has always aimed high with inspired storytelling, emotional resonance and graceful, artistic execution and has now been recognized as such in the eyes of the creative industry.  We hope you’ve enjoyed the program as much as we’ve enjoyed producing it, check out our season 1 recap below:

Yahoo! Bus Stop Derby – developed with our partners at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners – came away the winner of the Mobile & Experience Marketing award in the Interactive Advertising category, beating out campaigns from recognizable brand such as Unilever. At the end of 2010, Yahoo! ran a highly engaging and interactive local market activation program that showcased Yahoo! Mobile apps. The purpose of this initiative was to encourage people to download and use Yahoo! mobile apps in a meaningful way while showcasing our digital marketing innovation that would generate buzz, water cooler talk, and exhibit thought leadership. The Yahoo! Bus Stop Derby was a two-month citywide gaming challenge held in San Francisco, using first-of-their-kind 72-inch touch screens in transit shelters featuring interactive games tied to four key Yahoo! mobile apps: Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Sportacular, Yahoo! Messenger, and Flickr.

In addition to our two wins, our partners at Turner Sports won the People’s Voice award for Best Interactive Use of Video for their Ryder Cup Live Video player powered by Yahoo!. And of course, a big shout out to Yahoo! Finance, which was nominated for the Financial Services award in the Websites category and six Yahoo! properties recognized as honorees (some in more than one category), representing the top 10% of entries in their respective categories.

Congratulations to the Second Act from Yahoo! News and the Yahoo! Bus Stop Derby teams. They will be honored at the 15^th Annual Webby Awards on June 13^th in New York City.

The Daily Ticker will continue to be hosted by Aaron Task, Daniel Gross, and Henry Blodget and be broadcast at the NASDAQ MarketSite studio. The name change is better aligned with the content of the show which focuses on all the news of the day that effects Wall Street including the financial impact of political happenings.

Launched on Monday, March 21st Breakout is the second video program from Yahoo! Finance and is hosted by Jeff Macke, Formerly of CNBC’s Fast Money, and Business Day reporter and former Bloomberg TV correspondent Matt Nesto.

“Tech Ticker” averages more than 350k streams per day and according to Comscore draws a monthly audience of 4.3 million viewers. This makes it the most popular finance show on the Internet. And it’s not surprising considering Yahoo! Finance is the most popular destination in financial media. The site now attracts 40 million people each month, who come for the financial news and information they need to make informed investment decisions.

Earlier this week, the Yahoo! Contributor Network team announced the results of the 2010 Yahoo! Contributor Awards (YCAs) – a program honoring some of the Yahoo! superstars who shined the brightest during this extraordinary year of new opportunities, and showcasing content that exemplifies the spirit of this unique platform.

Our top prizes (“Outstanding Contributors of the Year”) went to three Associated Content veterans—Ayanna Guyhto, Carol Bengle Gilbert, and Steve Thompson —who have each built digital libraries of more than 1,000 pieces of unique, insightful content on a range of topics, and now regularly publish their work on some of our leading sites like Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! TV, Yahoo! Local, Shine and omg!. Similarly, our “Rookie of the Year,” gaming/music/outdoors enthusiast Shawn Humphrey, published a wide array of compelling pieces in his first months as a contributor, as has already been featured on five Yahoo! properties.

We also selected ten of the most powerful stories our contributors told in 2010 to call “Content of the Year” – a selection of more than 4,000 nominations submitted by our community. Among the honorees: a Hurricane Katrina victim’s gripping account of her return home, published to Yahoo! News on the five-year anniversary of the disaster; a long-time contributor’s once-in-a-lifetime interview with one of his personal idols, comic book king Stan Lee; a Cleveland reporter’s fascinating profile of a local man who makes art with an Etch A Sketch; and a filmmaker’s philosophical dissection of this year’s most talked about movie, The Social Network.

For a complete list of award winners, and a more information about each of these Yahoo! stars, visit the Yahoo! Contributor Network Blog:
·         Celebrating Our Contributors of the Year
·         Content of the Year: 2010
·         Content of the Year: 2010 (Part 2)

Congratulations to these talented and inspiring Yahoo! Contributor Award winners, who bring incredible value to Yahoo!’s family of leading websites, and do an amazing job of showing the world what our contributor community is capable of.

Interested in sharing your voice with Yahoo!’s online audience of millions? Join the Yahoo! Contributor Network now!

-Darnell Witt, Sr. Community Manager, Yahoo! Contributor Network

Next time you take your laptop, tablet or smartphone to your neighborhood Starbucks, you are in for a surprise: the new Starbucks Digital Network, in partnership with Yahoo! launched today in our U.S. company-operated stores. Think of it as premium content to go with premium coffee.

The team at Starbucks wanted to enhance the time our customers spend in our stores, so we had a vision to create something new, localized, unexpected… and online. The Starbucks Digital Network was developed to provide customers instant access to a collection of hand-picked premium news, entertainment and lifestyle content along with free downloads, local insights and events from nearly 20 different content providers including iTunes, Nick Jr. Boost, Rodale, WSJ.com and Yahoo!  It’s all free and only available at Starbucks.

Starbucks knew we wanted to create an in-store online network, and we also knew we needed a strategic partner to bring our vision to life.  We selected Yahoo! as our partner because we needed their experience in building and managing a network of this magnitude. Yahoo! is known for offering unique and compelling online experiences and employs some of the best technical minds in the business.

There are other key synergies in this partnership. We wanted the network to be searchable, and integrating Yahoo! Search was an easy choice. Additionally, Yahoo! delivers compelling content to their customers every day, and we wanted to include that content on our network. We are happy to see that Flickr, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! News are available for customers who are interested in social-sharing and receiving breaking news.

We hope you stop by your neighborhood Starbucks and experience the Starbucks Digital Network, in partnership with Yahoo!, for yourself. Between October 20 through October 27, we’re offering special content you’ll only find on the Starbucks Digital Network including exclusive free tracks from Fistful of Mercy featuring Ben Harper and Dhani Harrison courtesy of iTunes, the opportunity to donate $15 to a local school through DonorsChoose.org and a first look at a bestselling author Anita Shreve’s new novel that doesn’t hit shelves until November 30.

Whether your drink of choice is a hot latte or a cold Frappuccino, treat yourself to the new Starbucks Digital Network, in partnership with Yahoo!

- Adam Brotman, Vice President Starbucks Digital Ventures

• F-F-Fantastic phone apps: For the millions of you with touch-screen phones, you can now download some of Yahoo!’s most popular services. Call them the Three F’s: Finance, Flickr and Fantasy Football (or is that four Fs?). With interactivity reminiscent of their Web-based counterparts, these apps let you access our services on the go from an iPhone, iPod touch or select Blackberry models (including Bold, Tour and 8900 series). For now, Finance and Fantasy Football users can download them in the U.S. and Canada, while the Flickr app is also available in the UK, France, Hong Kong, and Singapore. For a deeper dive, check out our post earlier this week.
• Inviting apps & jumbo files: The new and improved Yahoo! Mail just debuted three new apps that turn your inbox into even more of a productivity hub. Head over to that handy Applications box and you’ll notice new apps from Evite and pingg — two options for sending and managing invitations. They sensibly integrate with tools like Yahoo! Calendar, Yahoo! Address Book and Yahoo! Maps to take the stress out of party-planning (and -going). And the new Attach Large Files app, courtesy of the folks at drop.io, lets you upload and share files up to 100MB. You can also collaborate by commenting on files, leaving a voicemail for more context or dialing in to a conference call for a real-time powwow. Read more here.
• Neighbors helping neighbors: Let’s say that waffle iron you plugged in blew your kitchen fuse and it’s been a blue moon since you last called an electrician. Where do you turn? The best tips are often from the people you bump into every day in your neighborhood. And we’ve just made it easier to get their word-of-mouth recommendations. Yahoo! Neighbors, a new feature on Yahoo! Local, lets you get answers to everyday problems. Use it to find local services or post questions and tips for the community. For a taste, check out this thread from some users in Dallas in search of a driving school.
• New souped-up Messenger for Mac: For all you Mac users, there’s a new beta version of Messenger available for download. Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0 comes with a bunch of new bug fixes to help it run more smoothly. You’ll also get the Messenger Insider window that’s available on Windows versions, giving you a daily snapshot of what’s happening on Yahoo! and around the world. Want to take it for a test drive? Download it here and read more here.

Subscribe to the RSS feed (or add it to My Yahoo!) to get this Product Pulse every week.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Today we’re taking a huge step in bringing more of Yahoo!’s most popular properties and services to mobile devices around the world. You can now have Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Fantasy Football and Flickr, with much of the same interactivity as on the PC, on your iPhone or iPod touch (via the App Store) and select BlackBerry models (Bold, Tour, and 8900 series). It’s all part of our effort to help you stay connected.

The new Yahoo! Finance app, available on the iPhone or iPod touch and compatible BlackBerry models, helps you stay on top of the market, your portfolio, and the latest news, research, and analysis with powerful interactivity. The app lets you:

• Follow the broad market indices or a specific company
• Access the top financial news stories
• Follow your personalized portfolio from Yahoo! Finance
• Drill down into specific company information (news, chart, financial metrics)
• Get currency conversions on the go
• Watch streaming video from Tech Ticker

The new app is available in English for the U.S. and Canada and we expect to support more languages and countries in the near future, so stay tuned!

The new Fantasy Football app, available on the iPhone or iPod touch and compatible BlackBerry models, ensures that when you’re away from your computer or TV, you’ll still be in the know when your team puts points on the board. You’ll have up-to-the-minute access to rosters, players, live scores via Stat Tracker, and the latest expert analysis and news. The new app lets you:

• Edit your bench (add and drop) directly from your phone
• View matchups, standings, player and team stats, etc.
• Get live scoring just like on the PC
• Get news and expert advice just like you’re used to on the PC

This app is available in English for the U.S. and Canada – those football-loving nations.

Flickr fans will be amazed by the functionality in their new Flickr iPhone/iPod touch app – starting with the Ken Burns-effect on famed Flickr images when you first launch it. In addition to being able to share and discover photos and videos, you can also take advantage of location-based information when uploading new stuff. The new app lets you:

• Easily upload and tag photos and video while on the go
• Automatically geo-tag before you upload (opt-in required)
• Add and view photos and videos by tags & sets
• Share photos with friends via email
• Search photos and videos from the Flickr community all over the world by subject, people, or places
• See your contacts’ recent photos and activity
• Make comments and mark photos as favorites

The new Flickr app is available in English, French and traditional Chinese for the U.S., Canada, UK, France, Hong Kong, and Singapore – with more to come.

And don’t despair if you don’t have an iPhone/iPod touch or one of the compatible BlackBerry devices. You can always access these three popular services from the mobile web – just head to Flickr (http://m.flickr.com), Yahoo! Finance (http://m.yahoo.com/finance), and Fantasy Sports (http://m.yahoo.com/fantasy). And be sure to visit the new Yahoo! Mobile Homepage (http://m.yahoo.com) and personalize it with your favorite content and services from across the Internet.

Keep an eye out for additional mobile offerings across a lot more devices as we continue to bring the best of Yahoo! to mobile users around the world.

David Ko
SVP, Yahoo! Mobile

• Now, dammit: We’re all impatient, Blackberry-wielding, microwave-cooking, Tivo-recording fiends. Why should we wait a minute longer than we have to for our stock quotes? Yahoo! Finance gets that impulsive nature and found a way to get you real-time stock quotes, courtesy of BATS Trading. And it’s on the house. Free. Now. More here.
• Commons comments welcome: The Commons photo collection on Flickr just took the 2 train to Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Museum is the third institution (after the Library of Congress and Australia’s Powerhouse Museum) to add their hidden treasures to this public photography archive. You’ll find gorgeous photos from architectural research expeditions to Egypt and the Paris Exposition in 1900. But the best thing is that these images await your input and knowledge to make the collections even richer. So tag and comment away, for the good of humanity. More here.

Subscribe to the RSS feed (or add it to My Yahoo!) to get this Product Pulse every week.

Now, 12 years later, our name has changed and our site has expanded, but our focus on providing the most reliable and timely market information has stayed the same. Today, we’re pleased to bring free real-time quotes back to Yahoo! Finance. As of today, unlimited access to the most current U.S. stock quotes, as of the last trade, are available to all of our users.

It’s a concept we’ve offered before, and one we’ve been focused on bringing back to our users since free real-time quotes were removed from Yahoo! Finance in 2006 when marketplace consolidation made obtaining this information virtually impossible.

We know how important this data was to your financial decisions because you told us, we listened, and we found a solution. Today we begin a partnership with BATS Trading, the electronic communication network and industry leader in free real-time market data. BATS is providing real-time U.S. quotes to Yahoo! Finance at no cost, and we in turn, provide it to you.

What does this mean for you? Business as usual — only better. As you check your stocks on Yahoo! Finance, your free real-time quote will stream right onto your quote summary page.

Check it out for yourself in real time, and check back as we roll real-time data features into new areas of Yahoo! Finance.

Mark Interrante
VP and GM of Yahoo! Finance

Reporting from both the Silicon Valley and the NASDAQ MarketSite broadcast studio in New York, we plan to provide the most in-depth technology investing coverage on the web. Expect Tech Ticker to be both quirky and opinionated. Our renowned editorial team couldn’t be stronger:

• Sarah Lacy, Correspondent, Silicon Valley: A 10-year Valley veteran, you may read her biweekly BusinessWeek.com column titled “Valley Girl.” She literally wrote the book on the business and culture of the Silicon Valley.
• Aaron Task, Correspondent, New York: He covered Wall Street for a decade at TheStreet.com, is a frequent guest on major business news programs and his daily podcast “The Real Story” was an award winner on iTunes.
• Henry Blodget, Contributor, New York: You know the history. Now meet Henry Blodget 2.0, author of the award-winning blog, Internet Outsider and now CEO of Silicon Alley Insider. Outspoken and battle-tested, Henry will never be at a loss for an opinion.
• Andy Kessler, Contributor, Silicon Valley: A former Morgan Stanley analyst, Andy turned $100 million into $1 billion as co-founder of a technology hedge fund. He began his career designing chips at Bell Labs and is now a best-selling author.

And me — I’m Diane Galligan, executive producer of Tech Ticker. I’m especially excited to join the Internet’s #1 finance website after nearly a decade of producing financial news with CNBC and CNN.

Expect 4-8 video segments a day, including breaking market analysis, CEO interviews, and even documentary style editorials. If you’re thinking this sounds a lot like FinanceVision, it’s not. We’re offering short video-on-demand clips that are focused on a single sector of the market, rather than live streaming coverage of the entire stock market. FinanceVision was actually ahead of its time. We hope to learn from their experience, and take advantage of the many ways the Web and Web video have since evolved.

The videos can be found on the Tech Ticker site, or in the headline feeds of the tech stocks we cover. And what about our coverage of Yahoo!? The answer is simple. We have not only the freedom, but the mandate, to call it as we see it.

You can go to http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker see for yourself. Let us know what you think is working, what’s not and what you want to see. In the meantime, check out the video below for an inside look at what Tech Ticker’s all about with Sarah Lacy.

Hope to hear from you — and enjoy!

Diane Galligan and the Tech Ticker editorial team