SAN FRANCISCO – Yahoo Inc.’s Web site unveils a new look today as the Internet powerhouse strives to remain the world’s most popular online destination and strengthen its advertising appeal.
The overhaul marks the first facelift to Yahoo’s home page since 2004.
The redesigned page, initially available in the U.S. at www.yahoo.com/preview, includes interactive features that reduce the need to click through to other pages to review the weather, check e-mail, listen to music or monitor local traffic.
Another addition, Yahoo Pulse, offers recommendations and insights about cultural trends culled from the Web site’s 402 million users worldwide.
Yahoo is making the upgrade as it battles for traffic with longtime rivals MSN, AOL and Google, while also trying to fend off an intensifying threat posed by social networking sites such as MySpace.com.
“Our goal is to have the best page on the Internet,” said Dan Rosensweig, Yahoo’s chief operating officer. “We feel like this does something great for everybody.”
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo regards the latest changes as the most dramatic renovations made to its front page since the site’s 1994 debut as a bare-bones directory developed by Stanford University students Jerry Wang and David Filo.
The new look is long overdue, said Jupiter Research analyst David Card. “The site was getting pretty long in the tooth and looking pretty old-fashioned,” he said. “Now it looks clean, crisp and modern.”
Even so, Card said Yahoo’s upgrades are unlikely to impress the younger, cutting-edge Web surfers who hang out at MySpace.com. “They didn’t really push the envelope very hard,” he said.
The most notable changes allow Yahoo users to pull down interactive menus that offer snapshots on weather, traffic and movies, as well as providing more immediate access to e-mail, instant messaging and music services.
Yahoo had to balance its desire to keep pace with the Internet’s constantly shifting trends with the recognition that changing things dramatically might alienate users comfortable with the status quo.
Yahoo settled on the redesign after months of testing. As another precaution, the new look won’t show up as the default page of Yahoo.com for several more months.
“Any time you touch the most visited page on the Internet, it’s going to feel like a big change, and we think this is a really big change,” Rosensweig said.
Microsoft Corp.’s MSN and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, the two most-visited Web sites after Yahoo, also have tweaked their home pages over the past year.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
