I will be living blogging Yahoo’s product call, so please check back here for frequent updates.

2:00pm: Title of the introductory slide is “Connecting You To What Matters Most”.

2:04pm: Still waiting to begin, not sure what the delay is.

2:06pm: The conference room manager said she is still trying to find the presenter, if you know where he is, press a certain key combination. I have never seen this happen with such a big conference bridge.

2:09pm: Kryssa Guntrum, the presenter is typing in the chat room, just waiting for him to get on the phone portion.

2:10pm: They are starting now…. They have “significant enhancements” to their most popular products, said Elisa Steele, CMO.

2:12pm: Yahoo’s vision is to be the center of people’s lives. Core to this is to be:

(1) Personally relevant

(2) Human relevance by connecting people

(3) Technology and science

(4) Having fun by making things fun and easier to use

2:14pm: Execution of this vision, i.e. to be the center of people’s lives. Nothing better shows this than Yahoo’s new home page, which brings what you want to the front. This is more than customization and personalized, it is about users taking control and Yahoo allowing users to bring the best of the web to you. You can choose ESPN or Yahoo Sports, or Twitter or whatever is relevant to you.

2:15pm: The user experience must be predictable.

2:16pm: Bryan Lamkin, SVP, Applications to talk about Yahoo’s Applications Update is now up.

2:17pm: Bryan Lamkin at Yahoo for four months now, he has been at Adobe for 14 years, working on Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. And what he did there can help Yahoo at a larger scale.

2:19pm: Yahoo is a great starting point for the web. Defining an integrated experience is important. They have a great set of technology. Bryan’s job is to deliver this great experience. His goal is to make sure you choose Yahoo’s properties within the Yahoo portal. Such as enhancements in Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Search and Yahoo Mobile products.

2:20pm: What do people need on the web? (1) Easy way to check in on the people and info that matters to them. One central place for this. (2) Simple tools to navigate to the sites they need most. (3) A view into what is happening in the rest of the world.

2:21pm: Yahoo wants to bridge that world together as the world gets more complicated.

2:25pm: 4 components to designing these core applications include: (1) Rich media (i.e. video, Flickr, etc) (2) Smart services (i.e. mail and messenger, a workflow system for your Yahoo mail to be shown later) (3) Convergence across different communication protocols, different applications and Yahoo is expected to break down those walls. (4) Anytime, anywhere. You need access no matter where you are (i.e. mobile apps).

2:26pm: Yahoo Mail demo by John Kremer, VP of Yahoo Mail

2:30pm: Yahoo mail is not only about email only, it is about social communications:

Notice the middle panel where you can read mail from the people that matter to you the most. “Recent unread emails from contacts.” Also notice the “Confirm to Get Updates” on the bottom right.

2:34pm: You can add folders of images to a sent email and then edit those photos in the mail (delete, rotate, etc) and you have up to 25MB of space per email:

2:37pm: Integrated MyPhotos application allows you to share photos and photos you share automatically get connected to your friends:

2:40pm: Yahoo is adding an evite application, which isn’t available today, but will be eventually. It auto-fills from the Yahoo address book:

Also, you can easily add this to your calendar:

2:42pm: Yahoo also releasing a mobile version of Yahoo Mail…

Features: 1 click access to read, compose, etc. Read access to word, excel, etc, and one click sync.

2:44pm: Dave Merriwether, Sr. Director of Yahoo Messenger is now up for a demo. New beta releasing today, globally.

2:45pm: One feature change is ability to change the language without redownloading a new app (16 languages):

2:46pm: You have search assist built right in:

2:47pm: Change weather to a location and the local news changes also:

2:49pm: More social details including overlays and a “Y! Updates” tab in messenger:

2:50pm: Rich media with video chat and also sharing photos in the window:

2:52pm: Larry Cornett, VP of Search Products and Design is now up to talk about Search.

2:53pm: New Yahoo search design, makes it easier to find and explore things that matter most to you.

2:54pm: Why are they making this change?

Aligned with new look and feel of yahoo home page. Gives more personally relevant experience to your search. Plus quicker access to search features available within Yahoo Search (old features, more in front). Search Monkey has been structuring the web, and they are bringing those back into the search experience.

2:55pm: The new Yahoo Search framework:

The most change is on the left column…

2:57pm: The left column explained:

Search Apps, such as McCafee, for safe search features. Also, to display SearchPad. Site Filters, Filter results by sites people love for that query (such as, Wikipedia, Twitter, Flickr, eHow and other very popular sites) Data filters, using Search Monkey to pull out the structured (”objects”) data Assistance, like search assist that you see at the top of the page, but this is more personalized search suggestions.

3:00pm: Demo time, here are screens:

I can see this myself, here is a sharper screen capture:

3:04pm: We will take away “searching for people” from Google’s domain:

3:07pm: Now he is showing off related concepts to show power of personalized search suggestions:

First searches for car related terms, i.e. toyota, honda, then jaguar.

Then I go into animal searches:

Note related concepts at bottom left.

3:09pm: Calculator and magic 8 ball app:

3:10pm: Yahoo Search integration with search assist in other Yahoo properties:

3:12pm: Prabhakar Raghavan, SVP of Yahoo Labs and Search Strategy is now up to talk about matching content to people.

They need to pull out the right piece of content for each user, depending on the person requesting it. Once they figure out the right content for the right person, how do they display that content the best way for the user.

3:15pm: Science and Technology through machine learning via content optimization. The algorithms look at what people are reading, clicking on, when the content expires and so on. The idea is to figure out what content to show on the home page and drives higher click through rate.

3:17pm: Social Science through measuring audience engagement metrics, i.e. pageviews and clicks. But looking forward, Yahoo needs to go beyond those metrics. A pageview on search is very different than a pageview on mail. So what are the right metrics to gauge these for advertisers?

3:19pm: Economics in pricing theory and option theory, through ad optimization. There are challenges of scale with these marketplaces.

3:21pm: Search through web of objects, as opposed to “web of pages.” It is no longer about how many pages you can index, but how many objects you can understand on the web.

That is the scientific investment on Yahoo’s side.

3:23pm: Q&A Time. It is very hard to hear the questions, will listen and add anything I can hear that is important to search.

Someone asked about how Microsoft’s deal impacts the search side. Yahoo answered that Yahoo will innovate on the front end, not on the backend gathering of web pages, but on how the information is displayed to users and personalized based on the data Yahoo has.

Does the Microsoft deal distract from Yahoo’s Search strategy? Um, how do you think Yahoo will answer this. :)

This is funny, the same Q comes up time and time again, if Microsoft is doing search, why are you doing this? Yahoo keeps saying, they control the front end of those results. Not sure if the media understand that, and if they cannot, will searchers understand that?

ETA for launch: Later this year, but current under test mode.

Postscript: See Yahoo’s New Search Clothes — But Will It Help? (Probably Not) for a longer look at the Yahoo search changes.

Gigaom writes that although Yahoo is number two at search, they are still number one at so many other things. That is exactly what Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s CEO, wants to communicate with the world, that Yahoo is not just a search company and does great things also outside of search.

Gigaom reached out to comScore to see what exactly Yahoo is number one at and that includes:

• News
• Finance
• Sports
• Mail
• Entertainment
• Games (near tie)

Yahoo Answers is not mentioned here, but I believe they dominate that category, as well.

We don’t often discuss Yahoo’s other properties, but it is important to note that although Yahoo is a distant second to Google in search, Yahoo does dominate the web in so many other ways.

Yahoo Autos has swapped out previous partner, AutoTrader, and replaced it with a broader editorial content and listings deal from newspaper-owned Cars.com. It’s unclear whether Yahoo’s embrace of the newspaper industry had anything to do with the deal. But it promises more content and listings on the site and apparently “marks the first time new car listings will be available on Yahoo Autos.”

Separately, Yahoo said that it will begin offering news and video content from CNBC.com. The relationship attempts to keep Yahoo’s popular finance site a step ahead of new and improved rivals like AOL Money & Finance. Next month, the company is also scheduled to launch TechTicker, an online video program dedicated to the technology segment of the market.

Finally, InfoSpace has renewed its deal with Yahoo, in which Yahoo provides paid links to InfoSpace.

Yahoo to Start Internet Program for Technology Investors from the New York Times reports Yahoo is going to launch a new technology finance portal named TechTicker next month.

The portal will focus exclusively on technology companies and stocks. Brian Nelson, Yahoo spokesperson, said the portal would offer daily streaming-video segments, blog posts, and live coverage of news. The TechTicker staff has not been announced yet, but rumors are Yahoo is in discussions with Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget, BusinessWeek columnist Sarah Lacy, and CNBC analyst Paul Kedrosky.

Yahoo currently has one of the most popular finance sites at Yahoo Finance.

Gary Price reports that Yahoo has launched a new site, named Yahoo Personal Finance. News.com explains that this new sub-site offers “free tools and how-to guides for tax planning, budgeting, real estate planning, and saving for college and retirement.” Gary explains they offer additional tools such as: financial calculators for mortgages, budgeting, and more. They also offer 13 “experts,” a financial glossary, finance rates and of course, how-to-guides. The content is licensed from CNNMoney.com, Consumer Reports, The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal.

Many financial web sites, including Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, Forbes and others were offering free real-time quotes to users until last fall, when the New York Stock Exchange increased the fees it charged for displaying market data. In response, many of these firms teamed up to form NetCoalition.com, a Washington trade group that petitioned the SEC to halt recent fee increases.

Today, according to the Official Google Blog, the NYSE issued a proposal to the SEC which if approved, keep fees at a level that would allow Google to display real-time, last-sale prices across all Google properties.

From the blog post:

We’ve worked with the SEC, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and our D.C. trade association, NetCoalition, to find a way to bring stock data to Google users in a way that benefits users and is practical for all parties. We have encouraged the SEC to ensure that this data can be made available to our users at fair and reasonable rates, and applaud their recent efforts to review this issue.

USA Today reports that Yahoo and Fox are going to announce a deal this week, where Fox enables Yahoo to distribute their video via Yahoo Finance. Fox “will provide clips from Your World with Neil Cavuto and Web-only video, including about 10 daily market reports, breaking news and investment and personal finance stories.”