The new version of Yahoo Mail lets users send free text messages from their e-mail accounts to mobile phones with numbers based in the U.S., Canada, India, or the Philippines, and instant messages to Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger.

The new service includes several speed and productivity enhancements, including advanced search options and new color schemes. Users can right-click on links -- such as keywords, dates, or names -- and immediately be able to choose relevant shortcuts such as adding events to the calendar or friends to the contact list.

More Social E-Mail

John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo's e-mail service, said that the changes will help Yahoo Mail become "a more social" e-mail experience. In fact, the company is pointing out the Web 2.0 features of the application to emphasize not only its social aspects but also the fact that the service now works more like a desktop application.

The new features include tabbed navigation, a reading pane, an RSS reader, and a more functional calendar. For those users who prefer the old ways, a classic version of Yahoo Mail is still available. Both the new version and the classic version remain free.

The additions to Yahoo Mail are intended to shore up its position against its biggest competitors: Google's Gmail and Microsoft's Hotmail. Yahoo competes against those two companies on several fronts, including search, advertising, and various information services.

Yahoo said that as part of its positioning, its new e-mail version will be cobranded with various partners, resulting in Verizon Yahoo, AT&T Yahoo High Speed Internet, and Rogers Yahoo Hi-Speed Internet.

'Leveraging Presence'

Many people currently view e-mail as the main business communication tool for electronic media, said Chris Hazelton, an analyst with industry research firm IDC. But SMS is also a sort of mini-e-mail, he noted, and its integration into Yahoo Mail and other applications could lead people to see it as another form of mobile business communication.

Including IM-sending in an e-mail service without requiring a dedicated IM client is part of a larger trend toward "leveraging presence," Hazelton pointed out. Because IM shows who is online, it begins to give a new, "live" dimension to classic, static e-mail.

As it moves into its second decade, Yahoo Mail's real-time communication features could create new expectations for such services from other companies, as consumers and business users might expect to track or be tracked continually, by IM and other real-time communications.