Why the New Yahoo Kind of Sucks
Let me start off by saying I use Yahoo on a daily basis. I’ve had a Yahoo email account for over 10 years, and I spend way too much time reading Yahoo articles. I think it is the content that keeps me coming back, but I don’t remember a time when they actually made any improvements to their site. It seems like this company makes one bad decision after another.
With that said, below are some things I don’t like about the new Yahoo design that was launched in January of this year (2016). This is only my opinion and I’m sure some people do not have any issues with the new design.
1. You can’t dislike news topics anymore.
I remember in the previous format, you could dislike a specific news topic, such as celebrity stories or stuff that don’t interest you. Now, I can’t seem to find that little icon next to each story that allowed you to filter out certain news topics. In fact, they’ve gone backwards – now you can only like a topic.
2. Too many advertisements and images within news pages.
I know Yahoo is under pressure to grow revenues, but at what cost? Pages take forever to load because the new layout has so many ads and images on them. Even just scrolling down the page can be a pain. Yahoo is pretty much sacrificing user experience for a bump in revenue earnings. To be fair though, it’s not only Yahoo that is guilty of doing this. Most of the news sites and blogs out there are flooded with ads and images on every page. I don’t agree with this approach, but then again, I’m not making decisions for a multi-billion dollar company.
3. Yahoo has turned into a news aggregator.
It seems Yahoo has stopped writing their own stories. Nearly all of their news articles are provided by a 3rd party news site. On the homepage when you click on a news title link, it opens up a popup window. There, you’re offered an excerpt of the story and then, you’re required to click “Read more” in order to finish reading the entire story. This then takes you to a different website where you have to endure more advertisements and sluggish page loads.
4. Commenting is a pain.
Before, you used to be able to comment on every news story published on Yahoo, simply with a Yahoo account. With the new Yahoo layout, you have to visit the 3rd party news site and then sign up for whatever commenting system they are using. This is a huge hassle and a deterrence because think about how many 3rd party news sites Yahoo links to.
Update on 10/21/2016: Yahoo decided to get rid of the thumbs up/thumbs down feature on their article comment section. What logical reason was there for Yahoo to remove this feature?? It was a heavily utilized tool. I guess Yahoo doesn’t care about what the users want.
5. Checking your comments takes extra steps.
Before, it was very easy to check ratings and replies to your comments. You simply had to mouse-over your name at the top right of Yahoo. Now, in order to check responses to your comments, you have to go to the comment section of a Yahoo article, story, video or blog, and click on “View Comments.” Then click on “My Comments.” Thanks Yahoo!
6. There are sponsored posts mixed in with regular news stories on the homepage.
This is probably the least bothersome to me because you can simply ignore the stories with the “Sponsored” labels above them. But if you’re not paying attention, you can easily end up clicking on a Sponsored article.
7. Email
I hate it whenever they change the email layout because you have to get used to it all over again. In this last update, I got used to it fairly quickly, but the new Archive feature threw me off at first because that was the spot where the Delete button was.
Also, the email bugs issue. I guess this problem has always been around with Yahoo email, but for a company that has had so many years to perfect their system, it’s pretty bad. The bugs are random, such as taking forever to load, or when you hit send it actually doesn’t send, or when you try to delete a group of messages and it doesn’t do anything.
8. Poor business decisions.
I’m not sure what is up with this company, but they’ve had a long history of poor business decisions. This company seems to be very top-heavy, with a lot of decision-makers who suck at business. I’m not sure but if you have that much money and manpower, you would have thought that someone at the company would have been able to turn things around. Just look at all their failed acquisitions in the past. To make matters worse, Marissa Mayer only added to the problem. You have to think, if they can’t even make good business decisions, how do you think they are going to make good decisions when it comes to user experience and website features?
Some of you may be thinking: Beggars can’t be choosers
I know Yahoo offers free services to the public, but I don’t agree with this statement and here’s why: Top sites like Yahoo make a lot of money because of the traffic it receives. That traffic comes from us, the users – all the people who visit the site everyday. Reading, clicking, filling out forms, etc.. all leads to revenue for sites. So, in a way, you could say that Yahoo users have collectively helped Yahoo become the major site it is today. Without traffic, sites are nothing. That’s the truth! Why did SnapChat decline a $4 billion buyout from Google when it didn’t make a penny in revenue at the time? Because… visitors and users are what makes money online.
What about you? Do you like or dislike the new Yahoo?