Applications
Yahoo! launches Yahoo! Mail Beta
NEW DELHI: Yahoo! today launched Yahoo! Mail Beta, a faster, easier, safer, and more social communications experience where users can view photos and videos right from the inbox – Automatic slideshow features mean people can easily see photos and videos from sites like Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube from right within their email messages.
Yaho! Mail Beta helps the 273-million people who use Yahoo! Mail around the world be more engaged, productive and connected than ever.
Beginning today, people can opt-in to Yahoo! Mail Beta to easily navigate and organize their inbox, browse photos and videos, more efficiently search for emails and benefit from improved spam protection.
The sleek new interface is consistent across all desktop, mobile, and tablet devices – including Yahoo! Mail experiences on PCs, iPhones, iPads, and Android phones. Yahoo! Mail Beta also lets people connect with friends across social networks like Twitter and Facebook and through improved instant messaging and texting tools right from the inbox.
“Online communication tools are an important part of people’s lives—whether they’re connecting with their friends and family, sharing pictures and videos, or keeping up on news across social networks,” said Blake Irving, chief product officer of Yahoo!. “We’ve built a powerful global framework for email that lets us quickly innovate and enhance this trusted service that people rely on every day. Yahoo! Mail Beta completes our trio of mail experiences, seamlessly spanning the PC, Droid, iPhone and iPad. For the millions of people who access email from a PC and a phone or tablet, there’s no better cross-device experience.”
To get the new version, users can search on Yahoo.com for “Yahoo! Mail Beta” or visit http://in.features.mail.yahoo.com and click “Try It Now”.
Users can view photos and videos right from the inbox. Automatic slideshow features mean people can easily see photos and videos from sites like Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube from right within their email messages.
It will help to communicate faster and do more – Designed from the ground up to provide blazing fast performance, this new version will be at least twice as fast for most people around the world. Yahoo! Mail Beta also speeds up tools that allow people to be more productive with the time they have, by more easily finding messages from contacts or using third-party applications directly within the inbox.
It will help to stay connected to social networks – As a central destination for social experiences from across the Web, Yahoo! Mail Beta lets people view and share updates from Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo!, and beyond. Additional features include enhanced IM and SMS capabilities for seamless chatting and texting within Yahoo! Mail Beta.
During this Beta period, Yahoo! will continually update and add new features to Yahoo! Mail Beta. All global users can choose to switch between Yahoo! Mail Beta and the current versions of Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! Mail Beta is available in 25 markets around the world.
Applications
With 57 per cent single new users, Ashley Madison rebrands as discreet dating platform
Platform says majority of new members now identify as single
INDIA: Ashley Madison is shedding the “married-dating” label that defined it for two decades, repositioning itself as a platform for discreet dating in what it calls the post-social media age.
The rebrand, unveiled in India on 27 February, 2026, marks a structural shift in business model and identity. Once synonymous with married dating, the company now describes itself as the “premier destination for discreet dating” under a new tagline: Where Desire Meets Discretion.
The pivot is data-driven. Internal figures show that 57 per cent of global sign-ups between 1 January and 31 December, 2025 identified as single: a notable departure from the platform’s married core. The company argues that its community has already evolved beyond its original positioning.
“In an age where our lives have been constantly put on public display, privacy has become the new luxury,” said Ashley Madison chief strategy officer Paul Keable. He framed the platform’s offering as “ethical discretion” for singles, separated, divorced and non-monogamous users seeking private connections.
The shift also taps into wider digital fatigue. A global survey conducted by YouGov for Ashley Madison, covering 13,071 adults across Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US, found mounting discomfort with hyper-public online lives.
Among dating app users, 30 per cent cited constant swiping and messaging as a source of fatigue, while 24 per cent pointed to pressure to curate public-facing profiles and early personal disclosure. Some 27 per cent said fears of screenshots or information being shared contributed to exhaustion; an equal share cited unwanted attention.
The retreat from oversharing appears broader. According to the survey, 46 per cent of adults actively try to keep most aspects of their life private online. Only 8 per cent feel comfortable sharing most aspects publicly, while 35 per cent say they are becoming more selective about what they disclose.
Ashley Madison is betting that this cultural recalibration towards controlled visibility can be monetised. By doubling down on privacy infrastructure and reframing itself around discretion rather than infidelity, the company is attempting to convert reputational baggage into a premium proposition.
