Today, Yahoo!Mobile SVP David Ko introduced the company’s new mobile homepage calling it “the world’s most advanced mobile homepage.”
At once rich and simple, the new homepage is accessible by more than 1,900 different mobile devices, which Yahoo! says represents a 500 percent increase since the mobile site launched in April. We checked out the site on a BlackBerry Storm tonight and were impressed by the features Yahoo! is offering for discovery and filtering of content. From tech-related videos to dynamically refreshed news feeds, Yahoo! gives mobile users plenty of room to play.
A few features of the mobile homepage include dynamically updated content with pagination. For example, the “Today” section now displays ten of the leading stories from all over the Internet. Users are shown top news, business, entertainment, and sports content. Also, Yahoo!’s enhanced mobile RSS reader now supports photos with captions and allows users to scroll through more headlines without having to refresh content.
One of our favorite features was the site’s enhanced mobile video integration. Video clips were quick to load. As previously mentioned, we got to browse through the Tech Ticker, which, as it turns out, is stocked with Yahoo!-produced video content all about tech, business, and financial news. Other mobile video feeds include Prime Time in No Time, a recap of the previous night’s TV shows, and general news, entertainment and sports videos from the Associated Press.
Users can also use the “My Favorites” tab to integrate content from nine social networks, including YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, as part of its Social Pulse feature. From this tab, users can also pull in any RSS feeds or other types of content, such as email, weather, and theatre information.
And speaking of theatres, Yahoo! is also nearing perfection with their newly revamped movie results. Users can get results on what films are showing at nearby theatres; they can watch movie trailers; they can read reviews from multiple sources. Best of all, users can buy tickets from participating theatres all directly from their mobile devices.
In short, the new Yahoo! mobile homepage is a well executed, updated version of the portal that ruled a much younger Internet. It’s accessible, fast, full of interesting content and infinitely customizable. In an age of Y!-bashing, dare we admit to liking a Yahoo! product?
We encourage our readers to take the site for a quick test drive and leave opinions in the comments. Can you see yourself using this feature-packed but still lightweight homepage on a regular basis?
