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Why My AOL can beat the new My Yahoo

Techcrunch seems to be on a run today. On one hand, it gives AOL Webmail a negative review, and on another it gives the new MyYahoo a great one.  

Disclaimer: I use My Yahoo every day.  Have done for years. It's how I read news from various blogs, my news checker, and stock watcher.      I like My Yahoo, so don't want it to change unless it is really better.

The old my yahoo seemed to work well - I see at a glance the current news (in the middle), my stocks to watch,  the weather.        

The new one has 3 columns now, but the first column is giant. The stocks widget now get wider, since the company name is displayed next to the ticker symbol - and I can't turn it off.  The middle window shrunk. So I can't see my news headlines or RSS feed headlines.  The 3rd column has a giant "Weather" module now, that is bursting with graphics, but really large.

I am waiting to see the new MyAOL, since I know we can do better.   Gotta really, really think about usability and not how flashy the widgets or drag and drop can be.  Big giant modules are not what you need here.  Usable,  Fast products.   I am going to be an early beta tester of my aol.

First user experience counts!   It's got to make you go "WOW".   

See the screenshots below.


Before (I can actually see the middle column!) :
Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

After (new My Yahoo) - large stock, small middle, giant weather  :
Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Comments

Anonymous said…
I have also used My Yahoo at home for at least 5 years. After "upgrading" to the new My Yahoo, my homepage consistently takes 30 seconds or more to load (32.19s was the high). They appear to be very heavy-handed with the Ajax, but they have done almost no performance optimization. Scrolling with the mouse-wheel is horribly slow, the actual page content is slow to load, and the product has a generally slow feel to it. For a product that is designed to be a start page, I don't see how this could be considered acceptable.
March 8, 2007 at 12:53 PM
Anonymous said…
I was reading it along with about a dozen other places today that seem to not even know what the new product does but 'claims' to compare Cayman to Yahoo Beta and Google.

More so, someone was actually comparing Classic to Yahoo and didn't even know that webmail (the current product) was there.

But what got me going was this 'ads' stuff.  I use Google, I use Yahoo, BOTH have Ads.  Both have ads ALL over the place... but these guys hone in on our ads.  Funny thing is 'Websuite has better ads now... much better.  Though the mortgage ads still get to me.
March 8, 2007 at 2:43 PM
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