I’ve blogged about this before but it continues to get sillier and sillier. Want to keep track of What’s New With Yahoo Mail?! There’s now three different ways to get only part of the full picture:

• Use Yahoo Mail’s What’s New Page link at the top of the Mail Page (which I will call the “What’s New Page” from now on). If you subscribe to Yahoo Mail Plus you’ll get a different page that looks broken to me.
• Look at the “What’s New” section of Yahoo Help (which I will call “What’s New Help” from now on). Hey, it’s got info about Avatars!
• Subscribe to the Yahoo Mail Beta Update Blog (which I will call the “Mail Blog” from now on) where you’ll get another set of info.

The problem with this is, of course, that none of these three-and-a-half sources provide all the info. The What’s New Page informs us of a Beta, Mobile Phone Alerts, and some sort of award they won. The What’s New Help section informs us of the new Avatar, the PhotoMail beta, and a change to saving copies of messages. And the Mail Blog informs us of the Blog itself and the new “dot” yahoo email addresses feature. There appears to be no crossover.

So, now I’ve got three places I need to look in order to find out what’s new with Yahoo Mail, and that’s still not full coverage. The Mail Blog is a bit confusing. I think it’s fine to have beta news in a different place because not everyone has the Beta. But parts of the blog claim “beta” while other parts claim “everything”. In fact it’s missing info on new beta features (RSS reading) and including info for non-beta-exclusive features (the “dot” email addresses). Which is it, Yahoo?

All of this gives me the impression that the Yahoo Mail group has a communication problem. They need to cut the marketing hype out of their What’s New Pages (Come on Yahoo, your PC Magazine award is not exactly “What’s New” material), they need to be inclusive of all that’s new (none of the News pages mentioned the addition of RSS which apparently was announced on the 29th of Nov. ) and they need to pick one place for all the news to go.

Come on Yahoo! I’m rooting for you!

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