Yahoo launches a new, “more intuitive and personal” homepage

Yahoo has today announced a new version of its homepage that it says is “designed to be more intuitive and personal.”

The centerpiece of the new design is a news feed with infinite scroll, which you can personalize by logging in with your Yahoo or Facebook account. As well as allowing you to specify topics of interest to display, the new site will show news shared by your friends. You can share content on the page via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook.

Compared the previous layout, there has been a clear effort to reduce clutter, and fewer Yahoo properties are given prominence. With responsive design, the page adjusts accordingly to desktop, phone and tablet screen sizes.

Speaking to the New York Times, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer says that she wanted to make the homepage “fresh and dynamic and add an element of surprise and serendipity.” The redesign follows new looks for Yahoo Mail and Flickr (particularly its mobile presence), both introduced since Mayer became CEO following a high-profile career at Google, in July last year.

Mayer has dived into transforming Yahoo into a modern Internet company with aplomb. In addition to freshening up the look and feel of its properties, the company has started to acquire mobile-focused businesses; Stamped in October 2012 and then location recommendation company Alike. Indeed, Mayer said late last year that Yahoo would become “predominantly a mobile company.”

Yahoo says that the new homepage design will roll out to its US users over the next few days. You can try it outside the United States by going to http://us.yahoo.com/

Header image credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images