The next version of Yahoo! Mail includes a feed aggregator as a sidebar option. The front-end is based on Oddpost’s blog aggregation technology and the front-end code even includes Oddpost copyright statements and comments. The back-end is the same as My Yahoo!. The Yahoo! Mail feed aggregator supports RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom 0.3. The aggregator does not support enclosures such as podcasts. Screenshots and analysis is based on Yahoo Mail 0.3.0 build 176.
Yahoo! is the first major webmail provider to integrate a full-post aggregator into the mail client. Millions of Yahoo! Mail users will now have access to RSS directly in the information management tool they already use every day. The subscription list format encourages many more feed subscriptions than a crowded My Yahoo! portal page allows, and I expect the total number of subscribed feeds will increase for Yahoo! Mail users.
Yahoo! Mail is an advertising program. I expect Yahoo! will begin serving advertisements next to feed content once the service leaves beta.
The aggregator is integrated with Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! 360, and My Web 2.0. Users can forward any post as part of an e-mail message, include the post in a Yahoo! 360 blog post, or bookmark the URL using My Web 2.0.
The add feed window presents users with featured feeds taking up most of the display space. Users can enter the URL of a specific feed towards the bottom of the window.
Yahoo! Mail RSS featured feeds
- Yahoo! Mail beta updates
- New York Times
- Sports Illustrated
- Yahoo! News Top Stories
- Braingle
- Wall Street Journal U.S. News
- News.com
- 101 Cookbooks
- BBC News front page
- Snopes.com
- SportsFilter
- Taquitos.net Snack Reviews
- The Smoking Gun
- Salon.com
- Techbargains.com
- Space.com
- Travel plan idea blog
- Digital Photography Review
- DVD Talk
- Gizmodo
- Autoblog
- Gardening Question of the Day
- Wonkette
- Reality TV World
- Overheard in the Office