Managing your alias and profile
Hi all,
Many of you have expressed your concern with the newest version of profiles, and believe me, we’re reading and hearing your comments and are committed to helping you maximize your experience with the new profiles.
First off, we want to apologize straight away for not being more proactive in communicating in advance that we were making changes to our profiles. We should have let you know that change was coming.
The first issue many of you have brought up that we’d like to address right off the bat is the concern of those of you who have aliases on Yahoo! Groups, Games, Finance, and Chat. The new profile provides users with a single identity while they’re on the Yahoo! network. Some of you may have heard about Yahoo!’s new strategy for a more open and social network, which allows for you to have one identity while you’re using Yahoo!, essentially making you, you.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t still have an “alias” while you’re on the Yahoo! network-you can still use multiple identities on Groups, Chat, or Finance. However, these aliases CANNOT have their own profile page, nor can they have any unique profile data associated with them. This means that by default when another user clicks a link pointing to your alias, they’ll be greeted by a message telling them that “there is nothing to see here,” unless you bind your alias to your primary profile. This also means that if a user tries to search for you by your alias, they won’t be able to find you.
There’s a couple of ways around this, though, that we want to make sure you know about. First of all, you can of course create a completely new account so that you have one account for each identity you want to manage.
Second, if you want to, you can bind your alias to your profile, thus merging it to your identity.
If you choose to bind your aliases to your profile, anyone who clicks a link to see what was formerly your alias profile will now only see your main profile. Additionally, anyone who searches for you by your alias will now be able to find your main profile.
You now have a choice: you can either merge your identities, allowing users to view your main profile, or, you can keep your aliases separate from your main profile even though they won’t have their own profiles. The choice is up to you.
If you do bind an alias to your profile, you need to first make sure you have a profile.
To do this, go to: http://profiles.yahoo.com and set up your profile. When you log in you’ll be asked to go through the new user flow which will pull in your old profile data and give you the option of adding new information-meaning, you don’t have to start from scratch.
Once you’ve created your new profile, go here: http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/peoplesearch From there, you’ll be able to select which aliases are searchable and linked to your profile. You’ll also have the option of disconnecting any aliases from your profile you don’t want associated with your identity.
To add altogether new aliases to your account, go here: https://edit.yahoo.com/identity/manage?show=a.
Additionally, if you wish to allow all users to view your full and complete profile, whether they’re a connection or not, you can update this information by going here: http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/permissions From here, you can select what portions of your profile you want to be visible to connections, as well as to people who have not yet become a connection.
We know this has been a rough transition for some of you and, and are committed to helping you use, understand, and (hopefully) enjoy your new profile.
If you want more information on how to use your profile, start with the new profiles tutorial, located here: http://help.yahoo.com/tutorials/prof/index.html
We also know lots of you worked hard on your old profiles and want your data. If you feel like you’re missing data, we’ve saved a copy of your old profile (and alias) and our Customer Care team can retrieve this information. You won’t, however, be able to revert back to your old profile format, but you will be able to get any data that you think is missing. To do this, please go here http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/profiles/general.html to contact Customer Care.
Thanks for your patience.
Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager
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- 1,114 Comments
October 17th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
What about the smiley online status? I really want that back if it’s possible.
Thank You
October 17th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Nancy, I like the smiley notifier too. The team knows that people would like this back.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:22 am
Robyn, If the Team really do understand what Yahoo users WANT then put back the old profiles. This sending a proforma email to the support team for them to send your profile details the Team so rudely deleted is a JOKE. I have been waiting days and still no reply but then that should not come as a surprise given the outstanding lack of support users receive from Yahoo support on other issues.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:09 pm
is there Yahoo support and how do you find it???? have been unable to log into my email for two days and no help anywhere, ????
i don’t belong to chat rooms all i want is my email, anyone???
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Hi Jean,
You can go here:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/yahoomail/help_f.html?from_url=
And file a ticket to get help from Customer Care. I’ll also forward your contact information on to the team to see if they can’t help you a bit quicker. Are you able to log into any of the Yahoo! services, or just Mail?
-Melissa
October 26th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
I have used this supposed ‘contact link’ three times now and guess what kids? No response - totally being ignored. While I am sure they are being swamped with people who NEED their information back since it was stupidly wiped out for HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE IN ONE GO, for the moderators to keep bleeting ‘contact support and all will be well!’ is just one more insult on the mountain of insults this fiasco has engendered. Melissa - I feel for you - but if you or your peers publish this contact support link one more time it’s false advertising as no one I know gets ANY response. Since this service if free doesn’t mean you just crap on people.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Likewise. I sent ‘em at least four messages asking if my old data could be retrieve, since (as I stated below) I spent several hours working on some of my aliases. And, guess what? Not a single reply to be have. I’ve been waiting for one for almost two weeks now.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:53 pm
This all is part of the Yahoo paradigm: If it ain’t broke, BREAK IT!
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:20 am
I like that, opinionsman. ‘If it ain’t broke, it obviously needs fixin’.
October 25th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
This all is part of the Yahoo paradigm: If it ain’t broke, BREAK IT! How true it is. I had a profile actually filled out with a photo. Perhaps unique in Yahoo, but I did. I had people comment very positively on how “me” it really was. Yahoo has become more difficult to use and certainly less user friendly. Just try to get Help from Yahoo and you’ll understand my point. Just like all of a sudden I can’t use my email address o1a@rocketmail.com. What the ???? Not enough letters, oh give me a break. I had that address before Yahoo bought Rocketmail and had used it off and on ever since. I had the profiles bookmarked that I had talked to off and on for years. An easy way to learn if something was new with them. And it was an easy way for me to see if someone was worth talking to in chat. By the way, it won’t let me save any info on the “new” profiles. I guess I really don’t get a crap anyway anymore. I’ve also gotten a new email address outside of Yahoo because I’m sure the day will come for whatever bizarre reason, I won’t have access to it or it won’t be valid for some stupid reason, etc. What Yahoo apparently doesn’t understand is that if people don’t like their product, people will go elsewhere and revenues drop accordingly. Duh !!!!
October 25th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
As if this change being jammed down everyone’s throat with NO WARNING, and having to rebuild a profile almost from SCRATCH along with loss of PRIVACY wasn’t bad enough, the very first line of the blog opener was “Many of you have expressed your concern with the newest version of profiles, and believe me, we’re reading and hearing your comments and are committed to helping you maximize your experience with the new profiles.”
Hearing out comments? How can you say you are hearing our comments when the next thing you say is “all we are going to do is help maximize your use” of the new system?
How is that in anyway hearing our comments? That and the ‘oops our bad, should have warned you this was gonna happen - sorry Charlie! Too bad so sad!!!” are so insulting.
Bye Yahoo. I think you know you aren’t the only game in town.
October 26th, 2008 at 10:38 am
I use Yahoo!Messenger everyday. I found that the new profile thing is absolutely unnecessary and disappointing. I thin it does not matter whether you, Melissa, or yor company notify the messenger users ealier or not will make any good; the changes that you have made is absolutely not a good one. I, as many of your service users, am really unsatisfied and disappointed now. IT is just time-wasting to figure out what to do with something like that. I just choose to give it up and use other web servcies more in this case.
October 27th, 2008 at 7:52 am
I’m with you Amanda. Everytime I go to Yahoo with a problem, I NEVER get an answer. Yahoo has gotten so screwed up since they stopped the User Chatrooms. Now it seems all they know how to do is what they call “upgrade”. I wish to hell they’d stop hiring from the correctional institutes and go back to hiring from the zoos. Monkeys do a better job running it.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:10 pm
So we can have a smiley, as a consolation prize for accepting the new ‘beta’ profile change? Doesn’t seem like a fair trade off to me. How about a choice as to which profile type I want? Then no one has to “fix” another problem that didn’t exist till it was created by this same bunch of… lol Yahoos! Seriously, it wasn’t even broken before (other than the picture changing part) so they should have left Profile alone.
October 29th, 2008 at 8:25 am
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” I like the old Profiles the way they were! I had a main profile with a nice photo and also a different nice one for my aliase, along with separate info, comments, & links for both. It was bad enough that they got rid of “Yahoo Photos”! I had lots of great stuff saved there. Then one day, poof, all gone! WTF?!
October 24th, 2008 at 4:50 am
If the team understood anything about their users, they would not have made this change, and in this manner. What’s Yahoo’s stock down to now? 12.65 yesterday. Its going down to 2. First the merger screw up. Now the extra consultants to cut waste, and piss off every user. Way to go Yahoo.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
In the last 24 months yahoo has managed to take a very good site and really screw it up. What was the reason for this? Why do you have to upgrade a program that works very well with the world? Because someone who comes along from a new computer graduate school somewhere gets together with a geek or nerd and the rest of the world suffers. Many times it is a very good idea to leave well enough alone and concentrate on problem areas that still exist not on areas which had no problems until you started messing with them. Thanks for NOTHING yahoo, you have joined the ranks of Microsoft and many of the other leading software companies in the world by fixing programs which were not broken by replacing them with programs not tested, wanted or desired by the end user. Again thank you for NOT thinking of the rest of the people who use the software or have stood by you since you first came on the market and did not jump ship when the new boys came on the market as your competition we stood by you, and this is the way we were rewarded, stabbed in the back by wannabe programmers and managers who have no respect for the end user. Thanks for nothing.
October 30th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I am in agement with all as way change some thing that was going great
to thing load of rubbish.
October 18th, 2008 at 6:45 am
I couldn’t agree more… I don’t care for this at all.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
i agree ..i dont like this new profiles stuff either….why do we have to connect with someone to see their profile…i like looking at different names without talking to them , maybe i Dont want to connect with them but just look around and see whos out there…do they have to know? i liked that i could look at anyones without them knowing i was.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:28 am
have you been able to find out how to get the pic to appear
October 21st, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Wayne,
Were you able to get your profile image to update? To do this, start by going here: http://profiles.yahoo.com
From here, then click on the “Change Photo” hyperlink to the right of the image.
Let me know if you’re still having trouble.
-Melissa
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:31 am
Exacltly, Gail. I agree with you. They’re trying to be like Myspace, where everyone is linked. They either don’t know that there are people who don’t want to be that linked—or don’t CARE.
October 20th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
If it matters to the powers that be @yahoo.chaos then . I don’t care nor like the new direction you are taking.
“IF IT ISN’T BROKEN , DON”T FIX IT”
I think, that if you read these comments from the users, you will find that we liked what you already had. This will be the second time in just a few weeks that I will have to “fix” my profile. Last time for some blanking reason you took down my photo , no reason given, and just made me jump thru hoops to get the same photo reposted. It tries on ones patience.Yahoo still has ‘chat rooms”? Could have fooled me. WAIT ……YOU DID!!
You will never get ahead by following. Translation for thinking impaired yahoo staff……… Trying to copy whats already out there will always keep you at the back of the pack. You will never be the lead dog this way.
Keep Watch Folks. My guess is that after they read my comments my yahoo account will vanish, never to be seen again. It was my first choice on the net. I loved it and it was/is my home page. It was the leader before all of this. I hope they(yahoo wakes up before its too late) If its not already.
Agree? Disagree? Post your comment. Let ‘em know
October 21st, 2008 at 11:13 pm
I agree, totally and have posted the same below and throughout this board.
October 18th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Yahoo,
I understand that you probably made this move to compete with Facebook, Myspace…etc. However, if we wanted another service like this, we would have requested it and we would have unsubscribed to your service and sought someone else. The User rooms are no longer available, users have to type in confirmation codes just to enter a room, and now user profiles have been tampered with. There have not been any improvements to your product for over a year now. If anything, I have seen a declining trend. I think you need to reconnect with your users and listen to what they want and need instead of trying to predict our needs. If this continues, you will lose your users altogether. If anything, please change the chatrooms so that I don’t have to type in a confirmation code. If I can’t get in on the first try I do not want to have to go back to the rooms options and click on the same room only to try again. Surely there is a better way to streamline your product without making your customers suffer. You are on the path to destruction, and I suggest that you start paying attention to your users.
Sincerely,
Tali
October 18th, 2008 at 10:00 am
I agree Making a second rate copy of facebook while breaking everything else people come to yahoo for is a good way to go out of business.
October 18th, 2008 at 11:23 am
CAPTCHA kept bots out of the chat rooms for around one week. Now it only keeps users from easily changing chat rooms. The local rooms have bots and people using room 1 and all bots and no people in the other rooms, from room 2 on. Without CAPTCHA more users would use other rooms. Get rid of CAPTCHA. It is useless.
October 18th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Rest in peace, Yahoo.
October 18th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
i sa put it back the way it was before the new yahoo sucks alot of my friends went back yo AOL because the new yahoo is bad iam thinking about it . you know the saying IF IT ISNT BROKE DONT FIX IT bring back the old before its to late
October 19th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
why is it that this is so complex
October 18th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
This new format makes Yahoo! quite pointless. I liked that the information on my Yahoo! profile was minimal and I could give my Yahoo email to someone I wanted to be able to contact me, but didn’t know well enough yet to let them know everything about me. As a single woman who does a fair amount of internet dating this protected my privacy and my safety. Except for this exception, I mostly use my Gmail account anyway, as it it generally more reliable and I get far less spam. After this change, Yahoo! really has nothing to offer.
October 19th, 2008 at 10:58 am
I agree yahoo has screwed up everyting from changing rooms taking away rooms, i guess they want to have total control over what people say in here so that’s why im going to paltalk,
October 19th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Yahoo is still in business?
October 19th, 2008 at 5:47 am
From my experience on Yahell chat and with profiles I can honestly say the service now is far worse than it was two years ago. Any changes made to “improve” the experience while with Yahoo has certainly backfired. They removed my album to “save space” yet increased everyones email box size massively. I don’t know about the rest of you, but my email box never exceeds 20 megs and my album was 10. Did I really need “unlimited” mail box room more than my photo album? The Capcha used when entering rooms seem to block real people more than Bots, wow, thanks Yahoo. Why doe’s it appear Spam Bots can create new names at random? You kill one and it’s little brother appears. Fix those issues before you “fix” ones like profiles, issues your users have. Not issues your programmers have.
October 20th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Graham, you make some darn good points and there’s common sense in what you have to say. Too bad some of these folks and their “ideas” didn’t have a little more common sense included. I don’t think folks should be forced to have their “real” names exposed in such a way if they choose not to. I liked the old format much better too and I agree 100% with you Graham about the bots. Somehow, especially when it comes down to porn, which I suspect websites get a kick-back from, have little difficulty in joining chats, groups, etc. - I’m always kicked these fakes off several lists I help to moderate, in addition to my own at Yahoo groups. They join, try to send thier spam and immediately when the join, they go to no mail so you know they are bots. I wish they would use all this effort more toward getting rid of the bots and the spam. The spam is ridiculous.
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Hi Evening Rain,
As mentioned further down, if you don’t want your “real name” revealed, you don’t have to. You can substitute in whatever you’d like for those name fields, and many users are opting to include just their last initial for their contacts.
We’re aware spam is an issue and are working to remedy this issue in many areas of the Yahoo! network. The best thing you can do to help us combat this global issue is to report users for abuse.
-Melissa
-Melissa
October 25th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
First off Melissa I feel sorry for you, we all know it wasn’t your personal decision to shaft everyone like this with no warning. That said here is one place we can express our pleasure/displeasure so just remember it’s not personal.
That said though, the privacy issue is a big concern. Perhaps here a couple hundred folks might read you can use a fake last name or a single letter as you say, but that isn’t going to protect the millions who won’t see your post and will reluctantly use their real name (or leave yahoo over it).
Also many times I have seen mentioned ‘contact customer service’ or ‘report’ this or that. Any idea how incredibly difficult it is to even find out how to contact yahoo????????????
In addition I have in the past - perhaps four times ‘opened a ticket’ on an issue, and in three of those cases I never heard a word back. On the remaining issue I got a robot response that advised me to try steps I had already stated I tried.
While I hate sending out a new email addy to all my friends…. I think I am heading off to Google mail.
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:48 am
I understand completely, Graham.
October 19th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Yahoo is on a downward spiral…what are you guys doing? It was easy (or somewhat) easy to use before, but not to educate your uses upfront, is rediculous.
Watch as you stock price deflates even further.
Gail
October 19th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
I wholeheartidly agree. This updating of yahoo has been one travesty after another. And now are losing or unique “aliases” is RIDICULOUS. I’m outraged, and the several hundred users across the dozen groups
I administer are pretty annoyed too. These kind of decisions should be put to the community. You folks let us down huge. And I can tell you a number of us are put off enough to consider dumping yahoo entirely if some of these issues aren’t addressed with more than Yahoo’s “well too bad this is our new system” attitude.
October 19th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more, I really wish yahoo would bring the old profiles back, it was much easier to read, and now that the new ones are active, all of the old information is gone. Yahoo is really going backwards.
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:12 am
Oh didn’t you read they still have your old profile information you just got to fill out 20 forms in triplicate to get them.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:14 am
Entirely agree with this comment, many of us just don’t want to enter this “facebook style” trash.
Moreover, the profile system just does not work, no way to show the “complete profile” part
This is a non-solicited mess! ! ! !
October 20th, 2008 at 6:17 am
This is right on. Yahoo attracted people for exactly what it was… a place to immediately connect with others online. It wasn’t meant to be all things to all people like MySpace or Facebook.
Yahoo Chat has sucked for a couple of years now, but people kept coming because it provided what they needed — an anonymous place to socialize with other people online. Now Yahoo seems to be trying to force everyone to show their identities online. Not a good move, Yahoo. If you want people to keep using your service then keep up the work you have been doing. Personally I am getting ready to delete my entire Yahoo account. I’m just tired of them screwing with me. The only thing that can make it all worse is if Microsoft buys out Yahoo. If anyone can screw it up more, it will be Microsoft.
Everyone might as well give up Yahoo and find another way to connect.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
1) I strongly support the request of Nancy that Yahoo bring back the Smiley Online/Offline Status…..plzzz..plzzz. it is very useful..
2) Like yahoo mails (new version and Classic version) yahoo should give its clients the choice on Profiles also to new format/ old format.
3) The big problem is I dont want to show all my connections to each and everybody like 360 style. It was better in old format that my friends are not able to know who are on my chains.. The privacy was maintained in better way in old format..
4) plz give us a choice instead of dictatorship attitude in this era.. thnks.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
1) I strongly support the request of Nancy that Yahoo bring back the Smiley Online/Offline Status icon.. plz.. plz… it is very useful.
2) Like Yahoo Mail (new version and Classic version) yahoo should give us on Profiles also to new format/old format.
3) The big problem is I dont want to show all my connections to each and everybody on my list like old 360 style. It was better in old format that my friends are unable to know who else are on my chains. The privacy was better secured in old format as One to One connections only.
Hope Yahoo will will reconsider our requests. Thnks..
October 29th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Yes I want this online status with the smiley back too plzzzzzzzzzz. I’ll really appreciate ur help regarding this matter if u put it back.
November 4th, 2008 at 7:03 am
i need smiles too…i like to expres feelings by smiles :))
October 17th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Please, at least, create an option to use the old profile style, much like LiveJournal allows use of an old coding system OR the new system. It’s simply inconsiderate to force a change this huge upon users without so much as a warning.
October 17th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Yes, please allow us to view the old profile styles. I’m the moderator of an adult group and I check out the prospective new members to make sure that when they say they’re adults, they truly are. I’ve caught kids claiming they were 19-21 yrs old but the comments reflect that they’re still in high school and actually underage.
October 19th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
i own two abuse support lists and now i cannot check out the prospective new applicants to join my list by checking their profiles and safety is very important on such lists as mine! i hate this and im furious! change it back.
October 18th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Do not like the new profile… would love the option of which one to use,like being able to switch to classic mail…
October 18th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
“you have a choice…” Yes, we now have a choice of crap or crappier! Can we say….dictatorship? We can have several alias’, but those alias’ can’t have info attached to them? How rediculous is that? Basically what you’re doing is saying; “If we just make it harder for them to use alias’, they won’t even bother with them.” In the end you’re simply forcing us to take the changes. Yahoo simply could care less about their users. Plain and simple. You try to be all sweet and act concerned by giving us help in how to use the new profiles. But still…..you aren’t listening.
October 18th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
i think it is better if we have a choice because all of us do not want the same thing some of us want classic mail too
October 18th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Oh, but Rei, they DID give us warning–@ least they warned the 360 users—not us. See: this was back in May. The rest of us weren’t important to even inform.
Update on 360 Transition and Timing
Hi Everyone,
Here’s the latest news on the transition from your 360 page to your new profile on Yahoo!: It will be taking place sometime in the second half of 2008. We don’t have specifics on the date to share just yet, but you’ll be among the first to know. For now just keep this in mind: 2nd half ’08.
I know you get a lot out of 360, and that there’s a good chance you’ve used it to deepen friendships and extend connections near and far. So, I completely understand that you might not exactly be “chomping at the bit” for the shift to the new system (i.e., that you might be dreading it on some level).
Well let me first say that it’s truly Yahoo!’s honor to offer a service you rely on to fulfill those requirements—keeping your friendships vibrant and even building new connections. Yahoo!’s promise to you is we absolutely won’t let that drop!
In fact, our upcoming (currently occurring) shift is based on these same core principles, but expands them across the entire Yahoo! network—so you can share your interests and activity with your community, and discover new content and experiences from your trusted friends. The approach gets a good description in the following articles and blog posts:
Yahoo Open Strategy – Web 2.0 Presentation
Yahoo rewiring itself from the ins