"With the all-new Yahoo! Mail, we're creating a more social e-mail experience," said John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo! Mail, as a new version of Yahoo! Mail was announced today that includes two real-time communication features that are the first of their kind from a leading Web mail service.

"We have always been focused on making it easy for people to connect to those who matter most to them, and during the beta testing period of the new Yahoo! Mail, we were able to incorporate a number of enhancements based on valuable feedback from our users," Kremer added.

He explained too that Yahoo! is continuing to offer its trusted Yahoo! Mail Classic interface because, as he put it, "we wanted to make sure that people have the best possible Web mail experience regardless of their geographic location, preferences or system."

The new Yahoo! Mail enables users to connect in real-time to their contacts within Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger or Windows Live Messenger. This instant messaging interoperability connects users of one of the world's largest Web mail services with the world's largest combined IM community and facilitates quick chat conversations within the Yahoo! Mail interface. People can also easily convert their e-mail messages into IM chats or switch to a text message dialogue with the click of a button, when friends come online or go mobile, and vice-versa.

The new Yahoo! Mail also enables people to select how they want to communicate with their online contacts: via e-mail, instant message or text message to a mobile phone number. With the introduction of this text messaging feature, which is built on Yahoo!'s IM platform, people can now choose to send free text messages from Yahoo! Mail to mobile numbers in the US, Canada, India and the Philippines in real-time without leaving the Web mail experience.

The new version of Yahoo! Mail also includes speed and performance enhancements as well as productivity refinements, he said.