You never have to miss out on what your friends are talking about and sharing across Yahoo!, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and more.

With this enhanced commenting feature, you can easily join the conversation with your friends and share what you are thinking.  Express yourself with either a short comment or a simple one-click “Like.”   

Start sharing what you care about from within Yahoo! and keep an eye out for more improvements.

Surprise someone by paying for their morning coffee.  Or drop off a warm coat at the homeless shelter.  Then update your Yahoo! status to inspire your friends and family to do something good for someone else.

Through the end of the year, you will see a heart in your Yahoo! Profiles status update box.  Click on the heart to shuffle through ideas for random acts of kindness.  And feel free to come up with your own random acts of kindness – we’re sure you have quite a few up your sleeve!

Once you’ve updated your status, check out what others are doing to spread kindness around the world at http://kindness.yahoo.com.

First, you’ll notice that the layout of the tabs on the top of your profile changed and we added a fourth tab for you to access your Account Info. You can now mouse over these tabs to easily see options for each topic instead of having to leave your profile to find your settings. Don’t worry, if you prefer to use the “Profile Settings” link, we have kept that for you but just moved it down beside your profile photo.

Second, we made changing your profile photo simpler. All you need to do is mouse over your current photo and click the “Change Photo” link that appears. Make sure to post an updated photo of yourself to help your friends find you when they search for your profile in the newly designed “Find People” search bar (in the “Connections” module at the top right of the page).

Third, as part of these design changes, we wanted to put your “Updates” front and center. With the new “My Updates” section on your profile, you can select which of your favorite sites you’d like to share updates from, see what your updates look like, and even control who sees these updates via the “Manage My Updates” link. If you’ve already closed the “Share Sharing Updates From Other Websites” module, you can still add other websites by clicking “Share More.”

And finally, you’ll now start seeing Birthday reminders for your connections. We are excited to bring you this new feature, so that you’ll never miss an important birthday! Your friends will be able to see your birthday approaching as well if you share your birthday. Check out the Birthdays help section for more information.

Go explore the new look and functionality of your profile; it will make it easier for you to check-in on the things and people that matter to you most!

Though your age will still appear to you, it will not show to your contacts or to the public.

Q: With this fix, will I be able to edit my age?

A: Yes and no. This fix is specifically designed to impact users who are in the 35-day holding period (for more information on this, please see this post), giving users the privacy so many of you asked for. Once users are past the 35-day waiting period, they’ll have the option of hiding or showing their age and will be able to edit their birthday. If you are already past the 35-day period, you won’t notice a change as this feature was already made available to you.

Q: What if I just answered my security questions the other day—will this reset my waiting period or speed it up?

A: Neither. This will not impact your 35-day waiting period. You’ll still have to finish your account verification cycle before you’ll be able to edit your birthday. This fix just hides a user’s age while they wait for the 35 days to pass.

As always, please feel free to leave questions in the comment box below.

Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager

Prior to August 17th, if you wish to have your age hidden, you must also hide your full profile (see below for instructions).

After August 17th, accounts that are in the midst of the 35-day waiting period, or, have just started it, will automatically have their ages hidden. Once your account has passed the 35-day verification period, you will have the option of hiding or showing your age. Thank you for your patience.

Following the announcement of the new age verification process, several of you had a variety of questions surrounding this new feature.  Below, please find a list of the most commonly asked questions on this new topic:

Q: How do I know if I’ve started the 35-day waiting period?

A: The best and easiest way to tell is to click on your profile, and then click on the “Edit Profile” link. While on this page, if you do not have the option of editing your age, you have triggered the 35-day period and should be able to edit your age information within the next 35-days.

Q: How will I know when my 35-days have passed?

A: Currently, the only way to tell whether your 35-days have passed is to log into your profile and attempt to edit your age. We’re aware that this is frustrating to some users and are working on ways to alleviate this frustration.

Q: Right now my age shows on my profile-how do I hide this while I’m waiting for my 35-days to pass?

A: Currently, the only way to do this is to completely hide your profile while you’re waiting for your 35-days to pass. To do this: click on the “Settings” link located at the top right of your profile. Under the “Permissions” tab, you will see a “Hide My Profile” link located right above the “Save” button. Click on this link, and a pop-up confirmation message will appear. Select “Hide My Profile”, and your profile will remain hidden until you decide to unhide it. (Note: Your display name will still be visible to others even if you hide your profile).

Q: My age shows as one thing on my new profile, but that’s not what I had entered. What’s the deal?

A: In the past, you were able to share your age with Yahoo! in several places, including: your profile, the old profile, and your Account Management page. For some users, they showed one age on their profile, and another within their Account Management page. This change consolidated this information. Once your 35-days are up, you’ll be able to edit your age back to whatever you’d like, and it should remain this way across the network.

Q: Once my 35-days has passed, can I hide my age?

A: Yes! You’ll be given the option of hiding your age from your profile. However, it’s important to note that your age will still be visible to YOU but not your connections.

Q: I am under 18 or my child is under 18-I do NOT want my/their age showing. How can I prevent this from happening?

A: Users who are under the age of 18 will not have their age show while waiting for the 35-day period to pass. However, their age does, and will, show to their connections. This can be removed once the user has passed their 35-day waiting period.

Q: Will everyone’s age be editable in 35 days from the time of this announcement, or does everyone’s day vary?

A: UPDATE: The 35-day period is variable-this means that this process begins whenever you change your security questions. To jump start this process, please go to the login screen for Yahoo! and click “I can’t access my account” — if you have not already selected a new security question, you will be prompted to do so when you log in. Otherwise, you’ll be randomly prompted to change your security questions when you log in. For more information, please read this post from Yodel, our corporate blog: http://ycorpblog.com/2009/04/14/a-24-hour-locksmith-for-your-yahoo-account/

Q: Why are you making this change? It seems like it opens us up for more fraud than before. What gives?

A: By making this change, your data is actually more secure. Previously, you could have used your birthday as one of your security questions. This means that if someone knew your email address and your birthday, they could potentially log into your account without your permission. Now, you cannot use your birthday to verify your account, which ensures that your account and your data is more secure.

Q: If it’s so secure, why are you showing my birthday now?

A: Currently, we’re only showing your age (which you can hide by hiding your profile)-not your actual birthday. This setting is triggered AFTER you have changed your account verification question, ensuring that your identity is not up for grabs whilst you wait for your 35-day period to pass.

Q: Why could we hide our age before, and can’t hide it now?

A: Previously, users hid their age by selecting a “blank” space from the dropdown menu. This is not the intended behavior of profiles. Once you’re able to edit your profile you’ll have the option of hiding your age by selecting a “check box.” You will still be asked to enter your age, but this will not be publicly displayed.

While I know that this change may come as a surprise to many of you, it’s important to note that should you wish to hide your birthday while you’re waiting for your 35-day period to pass, you’re welcome to hide your profile completely. To do this, please follow the instructions above, or, follow this help link: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/profiles/permissions/02.html

Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager

Prior to August 17th, if you wish to have your age hidden, you must also hide your full profile (see this post for instructions).

After August 17th, accounts that are in the midst of the 35-day waiting period, or, have just started it, will automatically have their ages hidden. Once your account has passed the 35-day verification period, you will have the option of hiding or showing your age. Thank you for your patience.

Over the past couple of days, a few of you have commented asking how you can change your age or birth date within your profile.

The profiles team and membership team are currently changing the way you enter your age on profiles so that your age is automatically calculated for you based on the birth date you enter.

We are also introducing a birthday reminders feature by Sept 1st that allows your friends to know when your birthday is coming up and vice versa, if you choose to share your birthday.  In order to do this, we changed the way you access your Yahoo! account when you’ve forgotten your password. In the past, you verified your identity by entering your birthday. Now, you verify your identity by answering a few secret questions. You may recall selecting your secret questions during a recent login.

While we transition everyone to this new verification procedure, you’ll still have the option of keeping your birthday as a way to recover your account for 35 days after you selected your secret questions.  To protect your data during this time, we’ve omitted the ability to change your birthday for 35 days after you change you answered the secret questions. At the end of these 35 days, you can edit your birthday through the profiles edit page and this will change your age.

You will be able to edit your birthday and age in 35 days from the ‘edit basics’ page: http://profiles.yahoo.com/edit/basicinfo

Please note: many of you are commenting on the fact that your age currently displays to other users. This has been the case with profiles since launch. Age, sex, and location has always been shown as public data.

Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager

Thank you to all of you who used the service over the years– we appreciate your feedback, loyalty, and dedication to the site, and hope you’ll work with us to improve your profile on Yahoo!.

If you did not retrieve your profile information or content from Yahoo! 360 (with the exception of blog entries), this information is no longer accessible.

However, if you did not download or export your blog entries you will be able to download and transfer entries until August 19, 2009. After August 19th, these entries will not be accessible.

Thank you for using 360, and welcome to profiles!

Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager

Fixes

When I try to post blog entries on my profile I see weird characters or “?” marks throughout the post.

We’ve been able to pinpoint this issue and a fix will be pushed out for this problem on July 8th.

I downloaded my blog entries from the 360 download page but am unable to upload the file to WordPress because its too large. How do I fix this?

WordPress has adjusted their upload size to accommodate large blog uploads (they now support blog uploads up to 700mb). However, if your blog is larger than this, or, you’re still having trouble uploading your 360 entries to WordPress, please contact WordPress’ customer care team using this link: http://support.wordpress.com/contact/. The team over at WordPress will ask you for your blog file and information regarding your WordPress account. Once you send them this info you shouldn’t have any problem accessing your blog entries on WordPress.

I tried to migrate from 360 to profiles but keep seeing the error “You do not have a verified email address,” but I do. How do I fix this?
This issue has been resolved and the fix has been pushed out. If you’re still having trouble please contact Customer Care directly and let them know.

I see people in my “connections” that I don’t remember connecting with. What’s up?

If you’re seeing people you don’t remember connecting with or if you feel as though your profile has been compromised (your content has changed without you changing it, etc.) please be sure to visit this help page which will outline what you should do if your account has been changed without your permission.

To remove a connection, click on the “Contacts” tab in your profile (1) and then select “All Connections” from the dropdown. (2) From here, select the connection you’d like to remove. Then, in the contact’s details, next to “Connection” click “Remove.” (3)

Quick Tip: When viewing a list of “All Contacts,” you’ll notice that Connections have a blue “people peg” to the right of their name.

Known Issues

For a list of known issues, please be sure to visit the profiles Help Pages “Known Issues” section, found here: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/profiles/cctop10/index.html

Features

I don’t receive an email when someone comments on my Guestbook or my blog entries in my profile. Without this how can I tell someone wrote me?

Don’t worry-this can be remedied! To fix this, go to: http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/notifications and set your notifications setting to “Notify me when actions related to my profile occur.” This will ensure that notices are sent to your primary email address whenever something happens. (Not sure what your primary email address is? Log into your account info page and check the section called “Email Information”– here, you’ll be able  to see which address is marked as your primary email address).

Exception: A few BT Internet users have reported that they’re still not receiving notifications even after opting in. The team is currently investigating this issue and I’ll keep you posted once we know more.

UPDATE: This issue has been resolved for BT users.

In 360 I could assign my contacts categories, allowing me to “file away” my friends and family members appropriately. How do I do this within profiles?

To do this, click on the “Contacts” tab (1) and select a contact (2). When their information appears in the right pane click “Add” next to the “Categories” option. This will prompt a pop-out window that allows you to create your own categories for your contacts and connections. When you’re through, click “Done.” (3)

Not all of my blog content was migrated over from 360 to profiles-what’s the deal?

If your profile or blog (or any entries) were marked as “Mature” or “Adult” this content will not be migrated over into profiles. Profiles does not support or allow mature or adult content. If you’d like to keep your content you may download your entries. If you’re looking to share adult or mature content across Yahoo! you’re welcome to start a Yahoo! Group and publish your entries there as Groups does allow adult content.

If you don’t have any mature content or adult content within your profile or blog, please contact the Customer Care team to report the issue.

If you’re seeing an issue not listed here or on the help pages, please report the issue to Customer Care or to myself (if you haven’t done so already), and I’ll ensure that the issue is reported (if it hasn’t been already).

Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager

Like most Yahoo! properties, Answers allows you to control your settings from both the property level (http://answers.yahoo.com) and the profile level (http://profiles.yahoo.com)

Within Yahoo! Answers, you’ll have the option of sharing your questions (or answers) with your connections each time you ask or answer a question. This option appears in the “Preview your question” stage of asking your question-here, you’ll be able to “Manage your Updates.”

This gives you total control over what information is shared with your connections, and when it is shared.

By default, Updates will be set to “Don’t share my Updates” to keep your content private unless you choose otherwise.

You’ll have the option of changing this setting any, or every, time you ask or answer a question on Answers.

Once you’ve answered a question on Answers and have decided to share your Update, you can further refine who sees your Updates by adjusting your settings on your profile.

To adjust your settings, click on the “Updates” tab in your profile, and then “Manage my Updates.“

Scroll down to “Show all Yahoo Sources.” Click, and locate “Yahoo! Answers,” and select your privacy settings (Anyone, My Connections, No One), and hit save.

After you’ve selected and saved your preferences for Yahoo! Answers from the “Show all Yahoo Sources” menu it will move up to the top updates menu, for easier access.

Once you’ve customized your settings, you can delete specific Updates (without affecting the lot) by clicking on the “x” by that Update, in your Update stream. This will delete that specific Update from your Updates stream without affecting any future Updates of that kind.

If you want to disable your Updates all together, deselect the “Share my Updates” box at the top of the “Manage my Updates” page and click “Save.”

Updates allow you to share your activity on the network with people you know and have connected with on Yahoo!. To prevent this information from being shared, be sure your settings on Answers are set to “Don’t share my updates.”

Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager

This post addresses some of the most recent (and common) questions from Answers users about profiles, and covers topics like privacy, search, and photo cropping.

As the Community Manager for profiles, I do my best to answer as many user questions as I possibly can, and if I see a common topic/trend on the boards, I’ll post a separate thread covering that topic/issue, so please feel free to leave comments below.

Why is my first and last name showing? I don’t want this to show!

Don’t worry! This information is only revealed to people you establish as a connection. If you don’t want to share this information with anyone, you have two options:

1) Don’t put in your real first/last name
2) Don’t accept any connections.

When someone views your profile and they’re not a connection all they’ll see is your display name (Check out this post: http://www.yprofileblog.com/blog/2009/03/05/profiles-updates-member-since-and-flickr-integration/ and scroll down to the “Display Name” section to see a screen-shot of what the public view (non-connections) and the private view (you, and connections) see)

I want to: hide ALL of my profile, hide some of my profile, or hide NONE of my profile-how do I do this?

To completely hide it, go to http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/ and down at the bottom click “Hide my Profile.”

If you just want to share your “contact card” (that’s the top portion of your profile that shows your display name, location, status message, and “member since” information) set your “About Me” and “Guestbook” to be viewable by “My Connections” on the settings menu: http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/

If you want to share all of your information in your profile, change the “About Me” dropdown to “Anyone” in the http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/ page

Want anyone you meet on the net to leave you comments on your page? Set your “Guestbook” to be viewable by “Anyone”

How do people find me? What’s the deal with search?

When you first set up your profile there’s a check box that asks if you want to make your profile searchable. If you checked it and want to uncheck it, or unchecked it and want to check it (or want to change your mind day by day/week by week) you can do this by visiting the Search page. http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/peoplesearch

Check (or uncheck) the top box if you want to be searchable. This means that other users will be able to find you when they enter your first/last name in the search page http://profiles.yahoo.com/people-search/

It is important to note that making yourself searchable ALSO makes it possible for you to easily share your profile link with other users. (Users who frequent chat rooms, game rooms, etc. find this feature helpful as it enables them to easily share a “clean link” with new people) To share your profile with other users, you must be searchable (have the top box checked on this page: http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/peoplesearch and any subsequent ID’s/aliases checked that you’d like to make “linkable” or “searchable.”

Doing this will allow you to share the url of http://profiles.yahoo.com/YOURID (replace YOURID with, your ID-if you’re a broadband partner (BT, AT&T, etc.) your core ID will include your full address including the @btinternet.com or @att.net). So, for example, to check out my demo profile for the profiles blog, my main ID is yprofileblog [at] yahoo [dot] com so my link would be http://profiles.yahoo.com/yprofileblog

What are updates?

Updates are a snapshot of your activity across the Yahoo! network. We’re gradually adding more properties/services to this catalog, so be sure to check back here for the latest information on the third party services that have been added.

My Connections is a feed of everyone you’re connected to (people you’ve actually accepted as a connection) who have “done something” on the network or to their profile.

Manage my updates lets you change what information is shared with people.  If you don’t want to share any of your updates with anyone, uncheck the “share my updates” box at the top. If you don’t mind sharing some information, go through the list and select which categories/options you’d like to share.

Don’t worry–if there’s ever something that you shared that you want to “take back” you can click on the “x” next to the update and it will delete it from your update stream.

Share more allows you to select which third party services you’d like to incorporate into your profile–this includes sites like Twitter, Picasa, and StumbleUpon, and we’re regularly adding more sites.

If you don’t see a site here that you’d like to have added, let us know! A little while back we asked for user feedback on third party sites. To see what people have already suggested, and to suggest a few sites of your own, please check out this post: http://www.yprofileblog.com/blog/2009/02/09/feedback-needed-third-party-sites/

What information do I have to provide in the “About Me” section?

We know that your profile is a personal thing and you’re welcome to share as much or as little about yourself as you’d like.  Because of this, the only required fields are your “Full name” and your “Display Name”–everything else is totally up to you. (If you still don’t want to share your “real” Full Name, feel free to make one up–just keep in mind that this is one of the categories that people use to search, so if you actually DO want to be found, make sure you don’t make it too hard!) Feel free to add, delete, and modify your profile as you please. Even gender and age are optional.

It is important to note though that if you have an alias profile and you do decide to link this alias (linking means you’ve checked it as on the search page http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/peoplesearch your alias will direct back to your main profile. If you don’t want this to happen, don’t make your alias searchable.)  Under the new profiles service we no longer support full profiles for aliases (meaning each alias cannot have its own profile) so just a heads up that you now have one profile per set of ID’s.

Because of the crop tool in profiles, my image becomes all pixel-y (and square)-how do I get rid of this?

Unfortunately, right now you’re stuck with the square images, but I have passed on the feedback from the Answers community to the profiles team about how frustrated some of you are with your truncated images.  I can’t promise that it’s going to change, but I can promise that your voices were heard, and will continue to be heard.

Now, for the “pixel-y” thing. Sounds like you’re using (too) small of an image. Images must be at least 222 x 222 pixels in size for them to not get “pixel-y” (this is the default size for profiles images). If you’re using an image that is smaller than that, you’re going to start losing image quality and will end up with a funky looking photo.  (There are tons of free web tools that you can use to crop images and also add cool effects to your photos–check out http://www.picresize.com/ which will let you set your exact image dimensions (222 x 222) and will also convert images into new formats, which is helpful if your favorite image isn’t saved in jpg or png format).

How do I turn off the “Suggested Connections” feature?

Currently, there’s not a way to disable the “connection suggestions” feature on your profile, but if you’re wanting to turn off this feature when you’re logged into your Yahoo! Mail, this can be done.

Here’s how:

If you’re using Classic Mail, click on “Options” and then “Mail Options” in the top right corner. Then, click on “General Preferences.” From here, deselect the box that says “Enable Connection-related features (Messages, Suggestions, Updates)” Click Save.

If you’re in All-New Mail, the steps are similar. Just click on “Options,” and “Mail Options” in the right corner. Under the “General” section, deselect the option of “Enable Connection-related features (Messages, Suggestions, Updates)”

Connections should disappear from your inbox.

I know that for some of you, this transition could have been a bit smoother, and I’m sorry. Hopefully together, we can work together to make profiles the product we all want it to be.

Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager