Yahoo after the bell 6/15/06: concentrating on new features

Yahoo! is in the midst of a huge overhaul to its site and services. Most notable is yesterday's release of Yahoo Publisher Network's new version and today's expected release of several new features on Yahoo! 360.

Users of Yahoo Publisher Network reacted positively to the changes.  YPN's new front page now includes how-to guides, help pages and demos as well as more reporting features such as information on average revenue per click.

Probably the best addition to the site is the Publisher Services tab which links to many other Yahoo services and products making publishers/users aware of them.  It links to Yahoo domains and registration, hosting and design, to Yahoo Small Business services and to Yahoo Search Marketing, to name a few. The YPN site now also explains how  to submit podcasts, videos and images, how to use APIs from Yahoo! Developer Network and so on.

This comes at a time that when some bloggers point fingers at MSN for hand-crafting search results and at the back drop of AOL releasing the redesigned Netscape web portal that would be similar to social bookmarking sites such as Digg.com but with a slant towards MySpace's social-networking.

Yahoo started the trading day on a positive yet subdued note.  Yahoo rallied strongly with the rest of the market after positive reactions to Bernanke's statements. Yahoo gained $1.17 or 3.95% to close at $30.79.