Guinea pigs squeal over Yahoo home page test

Some people Yahoo selected to test a revamp of its home page aren't happy with their involuntary guinea pig status.

On the blog post from Tapan Bhat announcing the new Yahoo front page, the commentary begins with a number of favorable comments and several requests by people who want to try it out, but soon, the complaints start bubbling up too.

A common complaint is that it's harder for a user to get to e-mail.

"I do not like this. I did not ask for it to be changed. It scares me that you have control over my computer to change only mine in the office and no one else's," wrote user Terri. "E-mail sucks. You have to go through four screens before you can read your e-mail. I want the old Yahoo back. You changed this; I did not. How do I change it back?"

Wrote user AG55: "Terrible! Takes too long to get to e-mail. Extra steps....yuck. I'm all for new, but make it more efficient."

User dlfarley thought he'd been hijacked to another site, but once he figured out it was a beta test, gave Yahoo a thumbs-up for an easy-to-use, fast site.

And alstrooper griped, "I have written to the support group to find out how to get the original Yahoo page back. The answer is, you cannot. I am now stuck with having to click and navigate multiple times to get to my normal e-mail screen instead of doing it in one click. I used to be able to hover over the weather icon to see current weather quickly; now I have to take the time to log in, navigate, and click. With all the negative feedback I have read on this board and zero response from Yahoo, I can only assume they do not care, and longtime users will move on out of sheer frustration."

Yahoo said it randomly picked users for "bucket testing," in which it compares how things work for users in different buckets. Because the company wants to get statistically significant results, not the biased ones that come from those who self-select, it won't let people in or out of the test. Future phases of the test will implement new features, and presumably, the company will notice if people overall reject the new site by using it less.

Update 2:02 p.m. PDT: Yahoo had this to say about the change: "Yahoo is committed to creating innovative, easy-to-use products. When making changes to Yahoo.com, one of the most trafficked pages on the Web, we understand that it is important to carefully test our innovations and listen to our users. Not every person will like every change, but we value all feedback and strive to keep consumers at the heart of our product development process. Testing and gathering user feedback have always been a significant part of our product development process, and we encourage people in the test groups to send us feedback via a link at the top of the new page."

Yahoo is testing a new home page. The new site is more personalized and customizable. This version is a 'baseline' for user testing; Yahoo will add more features later. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Yahoo)

[skillingssucks]

Wow, that Terri is sure no Einstein.

[t26l]

Well, she is using Yahoo e-mail.

[Tyba1982]

Are you serious? Terri is probably an engineer. Someone who looks at something and can come away with it's faults without being blinded by its usefulness are a god-send to companies who care about innovation. People like Terri make the world a more bearable place. So try to let go of your geekiness and just be human.

[pgp_protector]

So go to the new mail page, and reset you mail bookmark.
Problem solved.

[TheNPP]

Look dum-dum, you obviously can't read what happened to these people and myself. EVERYTIME you enter Yahoo.Com you get rerouted to M.Yahoo.Com. You CANNOT reset you (sic) mail bookmark. It won't let you override Yahoo "decision" to FORCE you to use it's rotten new page which takes THREE to NINE additional steps to do most of the things the old page allowed in one ot two steps. It is SOOO bad (yes, I was one who had one of his PCs rerouted without permission) that I reset my home page to AOL.COM. And the longer I stay at AOL, the more I am starting to like it. If Yahoo doesn't end this FORCED testing soon, I may reset all my PCs to use AOL as the default entry point.

[sreeser]

come on, you want mail... go to http://mail.yahoo.com

its not that hard ppl.

[gggg sssss]

or gmail - even better

[Michichael]

Shhh Sreeser. That's logic. This is the internet. Logic doesn't work.

[angeljeanne]

Oh come on, every time I turn around it is something else, Just leave all alone and let us do what we like to do! Was it the confusion as to who was going to own who when it came to M.S. vs. Yahoo?? yep probally. Yahoo just leave all alone, you are loosing many of us. JJ

[kevsmail]

These guys should see what Excite.com did to their new email interface (after 10 yrs of no changes). You wanna talk about slowwwwwwwwwww loading... zzzzzzzz...

[kevsmail]

p.s. Anyone remember Excite.com? Doh.

[TV James]

Why are we publishing the comments of people who still use Yahoo!? Flickr, sure. Launchcast, cool. But Yahoo!? Ugly design, a name that's embarrassing to say, sluggish email that renders poorly and displays ads and hijacks keywords within the email itself. Yahoo! would do the world a favor by just redirecting to iGoogle. (Yeah, yeah, also an embarrassing name.)

[mattumanu]

Google did the same thing with their new version of iGoogle. Some of came on one day and there was your homepage, all messed up. I thought at first someone had hacked my account, but it turned out it was just google messing with things. Then I found out you couldn't opt out of "the test".

Many of us permanently opted out by setting a new homepage.

[banarieo]

The problem with Yahoo is that the make these changes without user testing and without any options for users to have it the old way. For example, on June 13th they changed the user interface for "classic" Yahoo Mail.

1) They removed the ability to display the BCC field by default - you must click a button to make it available for each individual email you write. Why? Does it pain the Yahoo Mail servers to display this one row by default/option?

2) They removed the option to display full headers at all times. Why? I like seeing the full headers - I know what's in there and I like the scan the information. Now I need to scroll to the end of the message to click a button to see the full header. WHY?

3) And, even once I display the full headers, Yahoo Mail will not forward the message with full headers! What? Why does Yahoo Mail care that I want to forward the message with full headers to a new recipient? In fact, when forwarding SPAM or PHISHING email, the reporting agency ALWAYS wants full headers - that's where the information is. But Yahoo Mail now makes you (1) click a button to see the full headers; (2) copy the full headers to the clipboard; (3) click the forward button and provide the email address; (3) paste the full headers over the brief header in the forwarded message. Why?

4) Changed the addressing functionality to "auto-fill", with no option to turn it off. So if I type a full email address the auto-fill will replace it with one that is in my address book which appears earlier alphabetically. Thanks Yahoo!

Now here's the ugly part: When people complain about these changes on the Yahoo Mail blog, their posts are deleted! I have had dozens of my posts deleted. And Yahoo has done NOTHING to address these issues.

Oh, did I say "nothing"? Wrong, they have done LESS than nothing! They have not even bothered to re-traing the "Customer Support" people about these changes, nor have they updated their "documentation" to reflect these changes! So when you complain to Yahoo Support, they point you to documentation which you cannot use because the feature you complained about is still documented the old way, but no longer works.

So if you notice a sudden drop in Yahoo customer counts, don't be surprised - they asked for it!

[fedtho]

The perfect list of the tiny changes that made life more difficult, cheers (I quoted you and added some of my own below) !!!

[strongpimphand]

It's funny how tech geeks think! "mail.yahoo.com"! Hahahahaha!

If you're offering a mail service, it should be the easiest, accessable service possible! Why? Because everyone is offering one!!! So, I should be able to preview my mail (or fully access it) through the homepage, the desktop, RSS feeds, whatever!

Having to bookmark or type in a different address though is just a waste of time and defeats the purpose of having convenience!

[sticks1839]

It's kinda funny that CNet did the same thing when moving to their "new" site. I much preferred the old site, but was stuck with the new one. Thankfully they quickly adapted to feedback (specifically my main request), and the new site seems better than the old now.

[PandaSage1221]

Just a note: When I saw the word squeal, I thought "squeal like little girls," as in, they loved the new design. Kind of gives the exact opposite idea of what the story's actually about.

[purcell429]

Yeah CNET, you do the same thing. Thanks for defaulting my iphone to your crappy mobile site, so I have to waste time clicking an extra button to go to your real site! Hey, guess what? It works fine on my phone, even your annoying flashing pictures on the homepage.

[jjolsen]

I've had Yahoo! as my home page for 12 years since 1996. If "n" is the current number of years since then, I like each update on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being best, approximately ((13-n)*13)/10.
I know this comes across as trying to be funny, but it's quite accurate as best as I can figure.

[cgarrett]

How is that accurate? Sounds like every year you've used it they've scored better than a perfect 10!

[J G M]

As long as they don't make me look at those same pictures of annoying people at the beach any more, I say BRING IT ON.

[Zen-Masta]

Does anyone know how to contact yahoo to opt out or atleast get tech support for the new home page? I was selected sometime last week or the week before. When I load their home page it shows up as m.www.yahoo.com but unfortunately the page doesn't even load any CSS so it's impossible to navigate. I'd like to opt out or report the bug.

[fedtho]

=> what <banarieo> said, EXACTLY, *every single complain I have* is in his post (October 10, 2008 6:08 AM PDT)
Cheers for making the perfect summary of the shortcommings of "New Yahoo" !!!

My two cents added (continuing after point 4. of banarieo's perfect list of what is wrong):

5) Font sizes are now so tiny I have to squint my eyes to read them (worst case example: the commands surrounding my username upper left, along with IMessenger status, namely: Disconnection, account info, Yahoo mail classic - haha).

6) The flags allowing to mark an important mail, a feature I love and use all the time, used to be at the very beginning, just after the sender's ID; now, they're placed AFTER EVERYTHING ELSE, at the end of the line, as tiny as a dead pixel (ok, that's slightly overstated)... and they just don't spring to your eye - basically loosing their reason to be.

7) The huge new ad space on the right, eating up about half of the screen real estate horizontally (which must be the reason for the tiny fonts, obviously): the ad on top of the page was tolerable, this one is a joke (and forces you into paying for "Yahoo Plus" to have an ad-free page, which certainly is its purpose).

The one thing I LOVE in the New Yahoo is TABS; being able to write a new mail without closing the one you're reading etc. is GREAT.

Bottom line: if I could decide about

a) the font sizes,
b) the order in which the columns appear (to put the marking flags back at the beginning of the displaying of a mail, where they make sense),
c) placing the screen real-estate eating new ad at the right back on top of the page where it's tolerable

....well, I'd pretty much adopt New Yahoo.

[mohdazhan]

clean and tidy interface. easy to use (should be). good and nice jobs Yahoo! you will defeat google this time

[uohaa]

I agree with you on that!
do you think http://m.www.yahoo.com look more like a social networking website or the old yahoo trying to get google?
the m.www.yahoo.com look better the facebook.com myspace.com http://uoha.com bebo.com
maybe yahoo go soem where this time!