
Please put me back to old My Yahoo - stinger
http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/212118-my-yahoo-us
======
neya
What is surprising (and scary) to me is that corporates such as Yahoo who have
lots of money and great talent can only end up with seriously mediocre at best
re-designs?

At first reading the user complaints, I just thought "Bah, they would get used
to it" (without actually visiting the page first). And then I visited
[https://my.yahoo.com](https://my.yahoo.com), I totally agree with those
complaints. as a fellow designer, some points I've noticed:

#Poor selection of font sizes

#Poor selection of colors (especially for background)

#Poor application of borders (remember, in design, borders portray complexity
(in this case, unwanted).

#Inconsistent design themes (Search button has borders and gradients and
shadows, the rest do not)

[http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/9383/hhew.png](http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/9383/hhew.png)

It seems to me that the design they had in mind was something iOS7-ish (which
is actually good due to the minimal information it shows the user at any
point) , but ultimately they ended up with something else more complex,
confusing and awful.

Either way I wish Yahoo good luck and wouldn't dare to judge an entire company
based on this design alone.

~~~
l33tbro
So on the money. How does this happen? Mayer's majdate was all about a culture
shift, aligning the company to her old digs at Google. But it remains a
thoroughly mediocre interface and service (for some reason I have refused to
relinquish my Yahoo Mail account).

I think it comes down to 2 things:

A) there's an AOL-esque aspect to Yahoo. I genuinely believe that they don't
want to be innovative, because they have such a white-shoe and casual-user
demographic trapped in their walled garden. Yahoo doesn't want or need to re-
invent ghe wheel.

Ii) Yahoo, as s company, is such a bloated entity. A fresh, interesting,
original design concept would have so many layers to penetrate. Hence, the
diluted mediocre crap.

~~~
yuhong
I think Marissa tries to be personally involved in some design work.

~~~
l33tbro
She's pretty hands on. This is an illuminating (though longish) piece
regarding her approach: [http://www.businessinsider.com.au/marissa-mayer-
biography-20...](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/marissa-mayer-
biography-2013-8#)

------
gioele
I prefer hearing about _the reasons_ why something new is not appreciated
rather than the usual "the older was better".

The poster of the complaint didn't really want to go back to the old My Yahoo.
What they want is a new My Yahoo that

* use smaller fonts ("Font way too big and no way to adjust.")

* preserve the user-configured layouts ("Apps are rearranged all over the place, and some old ones are no longer available.")

* provide the useful quick previews for new items ("Hovering over news items no longer gives brief synopses.")

* etc.

Any discussion about "new vs old" is not going to be constructive. Users
should learn to report "what" they want, not just filing generic complains.
But treating users as intelligent people that can be taught things may go
against the current trend of treating users (especially when customers) as
spoiled kids.

If I were to deploy such an interface change I would provide a complaints box
with these instructions: "0) complain only about one things, you can file as
many complaint as you want. 1) Please summarize what you do not like. 2)
Please suggest a better alternative. NOTE: generic complains like 'it sucks'
will be ignored."

~~~
hussong
You can read the generic complaints as "I don't want things to change at all.
They were ok the way they were. I don't want to be forced to adapt to changes
that I never asked for and that do not seem beneficial to me. I don't want to
deal with this at all. I don't even want to think about it. I just want to use
the app like I used to and carry on with my life."

Resistance to change is a major factor in the adoption of new technology and
without some kind of change management, reactance will occur.

------
mythz
I haven't used My Yahoo in about 4-5 years since switching to igoogle, but
since iGoogle shuts down at the end of the year I just gave My Yahoo another
look as I'll need a new dashboard/news/weather replacement soon. The old My
Yahoo was hideous, that looked like it accumulated a bit of Bitrot over the
years, the new one actually looks like a breath of fresh air, quite polished
and well-designed. It's more likely I'll be switching back to My Yahoo once
iGoogle goes out.

~~~
psbp
Are we looking at the same site?:
[https://my.yahoo.com/?mkg=970](https://my.yahoo.com/?mkg=970)

iGoogle is being transitioned out for a Google now homepage. It's a much
better implementation than a smattering of stale info boxes/links.

------
DigitalSea
The aged old problem of change: there are always people who are against it.
Change is what Yahoo! needs, if some people can't handle it then maybe they
should move on.

~~~
CamperBob2
Except they 'fixed' stuff that wasn't broken, like Groups.

~~~
aidenn0
and sports. top center for each team page used to be the most current game
with direct links to box-score and recap/preview. below that was news with
stats and division standings in a sidebar. everything I wanted on one page.
Now it's split into multiple pages that aren't well interlinked.

only thing I can think of is they get more money with more pageviews

~~~
CamperBob2
Sounds plausible. By far the plurality of complaints on that page have to do
with the loss of customizability. It's as if Yahoo desperately wants people to
flip through several pages of unrequested information from sports scores to
stock quotes, where one custom page would have sufficed before.

This also ties in with the overall industry trend of using more pixels -- in
the form of unnecessary whitespace and large fonts that, again, can't be
customized by the user -- to display less information. Once again, the company
gets more ad revenue as users struggle to access content that was previously
displayed in a more compact format.

These days, beleaguered behemoths like Yahoo and Microsoft focus their
business strategies on _their_ wants and needs rather than those of their
users. Obviously, this kind of abuse will only work until they're replaced by
more customer-centric organizations.

------
shitlord
This reminds me of an xkcd comic: every change breaks someone's workflow. It
would have been a good idea to include an opt out feature, though.

~~~
sosborn
>It would have been a good idea to include an opt out feature, though

How far do you carry that opt out? Three versions down the line do you end up
having to select one out of four versions? Who is going to maintain that?

~~~
derefr
Exactly. These people don't realize that "try it" really means "switch ahead
of the time when we force everyone else to switch." There's no opt-out because
everyone is going to be switched sooner or later, whether they like it or not.

~~~
yuhong
It is still useful when the new version have problems. It took some time
before Google finally removed the old Google Groups, and they made it easy to
switch back and forth during the meantime.

~~~
plorkyeran
And currently you have the new Google Maps that's mostly useless, and it's
fairly easy to switch back and forth between it and the old version.

------
xenophanes
Yahoo just broke Yahoo Groups a few weeks ago. The new UI is god awful and
makes some stuff impossible (like posting in plain text with proper quoting).
It's also literally rather broken: author search doesn't work at all. Also
they are losing and delaying emails at random and have been for weeks, and
stopped answering support emails about it.

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michaelpinto
You can't import the extra tabs to the new service? The decent engineering
talent has clearly left the building at Yahoo!

MyYahoo has been my default RSS reader before there was a google (yes I'm
ancient) and it was a real gem. I have 10 tabs in the damn thing and the idea
of those not being easy to transfer is a really great reason to find something
else.

I guess my real lesson is NEVER trust a third party with the data you love.
And I don't care if it's Google or Facebook I'm telling you now as you become
an older nerd that those services will go the way of GeoCities one day.

------
prostoalex
I opted into new My Yahoo!, was presented with a preview with a warning as
well as an option to go back
[https://www.evernote.com/shard/s103/sh/6dff6226-59b4-44e1-82...](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s103/sh/6dff6226-59b4-44e1-8239-35826d9b7bee/42268552ba92610f4e19f1508d723fe5/deep/0/Screenshot%209/20/13%209:56%20PM.png)
What did I do wrong?

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badman_ting
People hate change. Sometimes warranted, sometimes not.

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nhebb
I don't like the color scheme, but other than that it's not too bad. Yahoo
does need to allow more user customization before they lose too many users.
That said, people tend to be more vocal when they don't like something. I
doubt that those who like the change, or aren't bothered by it, are going to
make a comment on uservoice.

~~~
rll
"Choose Themes" fixes your colour scheme issue.

~~~
nhebb
If there ever comes a day when I actually use yahoo, I may just take your
advice and look for that. ;-)

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JDDunn9
Ah the vocal minority. As Henry Ford said, "If I had asked people what they
wanted, they would have said faster horses". Don't let a few troglodytes stand
in the way of progress. Look at your analytics for approval/disapproval, not
your inbox.

~~~
psbp
Have you seen the actual site? It's atrocious.

~~~
sagarm
Looked quite nice to me.

Disclaimer: I don't use my.yahoo.com.

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jmadsen
The issue sfor me are:

1) like all the subjects of this link, I can't go take a look & decide -
they're forcing me into it.

2) I use Yahoo as a simple new aggregator, with a few small, collapsible boxes
for weather, a few sports scores, a couple links. I don't need to see images
of the sun that take 15% of my screen to tell me tomorrow will be sunny

I think the comment "This is MY Yahoo, not YOUR Yahoo" hit it right on target.
Add to the fact that their new email system is an unusable disaster, it is
sadly time after 15(?) years to dump them

------
Aloha
The web interface for Yahoo! Groups is more or less unusable. The admin panel
doesn't load, can't read messages, can't approve people - More or Less - its
non functional.

------
jmadsen
I can't believe how much of the stuff they put out these days is just flat out
broken. How does this get past QA?

I've posted this before, but for all the money they have, give me a decently
paid position and I'll at least make sure things actually WORK

