I have written a couple of posts discussing my unhappiness with the Yahoo! Mail Beta. You will notice in the comments for each one of those posts, Ryan Kennedy, Yahoo! Mail’s Beta Evangelist was nice enough to stop by and comment on some of my thoughts. One of my biggest issues that I discussed in previous posts was the lack of information and communication Yahoo! Mail was providing us. Ryan pointed out in his comments that they have a blog focused on updating everyone on what is going on with Yahoo! Mail. I thought that was great, the only issue I had was the blog had not been updated since December 15th. DOH!

Well two days ago, the blog finally had a new post, hallelujah! Ryan announced the upcoming integration of Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger. He also has a little video of how it will work. I would love to show you myself, but Yahoo is rolling this out “slowly” and my account has not been integrated yet.

After reading Ryan’s post and watching the video, I was sitting here wondering what my feelings were on this and I came to the conclusion that I really do not have any strong feelings on this one way or the other. It’s an incredibly basic component that Google has had since the launch of Gmail. I feel that this capability will drive no-one to sign up for Yahoo! Mail nor will it bring me or anyone else back to use Yahoo! Mail as our primary personal email account as it had been for many years.

One other thought that I wanted to share. When I was reading Ryan’s blog I noticed something interesting, he is not offering users the opportunity to comment on his posts. My question is why? Ryan how does someone call him or herself an evangelist if they are unwilling to hear and read comments and feedback by the people you should covet most, your users? True evangelism at least in my humble opinion is not a one way street, it’s two ways.

This is I think the third article I have written about Yahoo! Mail. Why do you think that is? Is it that I am just a big pain in the a**? Maybe, my mom would say so, but I would say it is because Yahoo! Mail is an application that I have used for a long time and I have/had some passion for it.

How many others are out there like me? How many others are slowly moving to Gmail, MSN or something else and taking the place of where Yahoo! Mail had been for years? What are you doing to get us back? What are the “WoW” factors of Yahoo! Mail? What is going to help me read and send email better and faster? You want my eyes and attention so you can sell ads, you are going to have to give me something worth using and right now you do not have it.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo!, Yahoo! Mail, blog, Yahoo! Messenger