Yahoo Unveils New Interactive Home Page With Facebook’s Help

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Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has rolled out a new home page that’s more interactive and personalized to users. The new page just went live this morning, and it’s the latest step in the company’s efforts to reinvent itself under the guidance of CEO Marissa Mayer, who took the helm less than a year ago. This site revamp is the first since 2009.

Yahoo Unveils New Interactive Home Page With Facebook's Help

The biggest change to Yahoo’s home page is the personalization. It now sports a large slider in a prominent position at the top of the page. There’s also a news feed, and the more users click on certain types of stories, the more Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) knows what kinds of information each user likes.

The first time users log onto the page, the feed is meant to be generic, but it grows more and more personalized the more it’s used. However, when I logged onto it the first time, I noticed a lot of stories about Apple and related financial and technology topics in the news feed, which match my daily search queries, even though I use Google Chrome currently. Of course this could be a coincidence, as I’m just a single user. The sliders at the top of the page however, did not appear to be personalized.

Users can also give direct feedback about the types of stories they want to see by taking the cursor to the right side of a particular story, clicking on the X, and then choosing any of the topics they don’t want to see as often as the others.

Mayer appeared on NBC’s “Today” show this morning, she said there will be more changes in the coming days. In her latest blog post, she drew a comparison between the company’s newly revamped newsfeed and the way Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) personalizes its timelines. In addition, Mayer said new apps are coming and users will be able to log in with either their Yahoo! or Facebook user names, adding  that the site would work well with mobile devices.

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