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Yahoo Mail surpasses 100 million active users, tweaks layout

Although it's not exactly on par with the subscription counts at Facebook and Gmail, Yahoo Mail now has 100 million active users to call its own.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor

Yahoo has hit two milestones as of late. Its personal email service now retains over 100 million monthly active users, and its Facebook page has 500,000 fans, which has been heralded as the "most explosive page" on the social network.

TechCrunch reports that Yahoo still retains the top crown among free webmail providers in the United States.

To keep the momentum going, Yahoo has snuck in a few changes to Yahoo Mail's layout. Seema Kamath, a product manager for Yahoo Mail, wrote on the service's official blog that Yahoo receives approximately 5,000 pieces of feedback from users each day.

Thus, most of the changes are inspired from that particular source. Some examples of the interface update include adding the message toolbar at the bottom of messages to boost productivity and navigation flow as well as a switch view feature that enables users to toggle between paginated and infinite scrolling view.

The last major alterations came in May when a revamped beta design rolled out in full-fledged form. That included integrating Facebook and Twitter features, prioritized messages, and more vigilant spam filtration.

Nevertheless, despite the milestone and Yahoo's place at the top of free web-based email services, the hindrances towards subscribing to Yahoo Mail are still there. It took Yahoo Mail over three months to reel in another 10 million monthly active users in the U.S. from the 90 million it had in May. (For reference, Yahoo Mail has more than 289 million users worldwide.)

By comparison, Google+ managed to attract over 20 million within a matter of weeks. Yes, Google already has the name brand in place, but it's still a brand new social networking site. Yahoo Mail was initially released in 1997. The only other valuable integrated product that Yahoo Mail retains is Yahoo Messenger, which is arguably more popular abroad than it is in the United States.

Gmail, on the other hand, opens the door to Gchat, Google+ (there are invites galore now), Google Apps and more. For anyone signing up for a new, free web email account, why would anyone pick Yahoo over Google at this point?

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