While the majority of the Yahoo! Groups team is working on strengthening and improving the core Groups product (more on that to come soon), a small team of folks have been working on a new way to create features within Groups, features that can be customized by moderators to fit the specific needs of their groups.

We’ve been calling the work this team has been doing “Groups Labs”, and we are excited today to announce the first new feature (or “grouplet”) built using the Groups Labs framework: the People Map!

What is People Map?
Have you ever wondered who the members of your group are and where they live? If so, you’ll want to try out the People Map, which offers a simple way to add people to a map.

But the People Map is more than just a way to map member locations. By giving group owners and moderators the ability to customize the questions members are asked, the People Map can also serve as a dynamic group address book or even a group specific profile.

Learn More About People Map
You can learn all about the People Map, including how to link your members to it during this limited Beta period, here: http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/peoplemap/

Please keep in mind that we are in the early stages of a first beta, which means that there are lots of kinks still to work out and improvements to be made (you can click here for a list of known issues with the current release).

People Map Feedback
So if you want to wait for a later release to begin trying it out in your groups, we understand. Nevertheless, we do think the People Map is ready for lots of groups to begin using it, and we look forward to the feedback from those who do. In fact, we’ve created a group specifically to collect this feedback.

We look forward to hearing what you think.

Thanks!
Jami
Groups Community Manager

P.S. You can try out the People Map (from a member perspective) in the Moderator Central group.

Several of you have asked how the order of groups is determined when someone searches (or browses) for a group within the Groups Search Directory, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to explain.

The order is based on a combination of factors that includes the number of members, the frequency of activity, and whether or not the group moderates messages or members. To prevent gaming of the system we can’t divulge the exact algorithm (just as search engines can’t tell you exactly how they rank results), but all of these elements play a role and may explain the fluctuations that some of you have reported.

Our ultimate goal is to serve up the highest quality Groups based on the topic or keyword being searched. If you feel that our algorithm isn’t performing well, we’d love for you to share examples of searches or categories that aren’t providing the best results first, so that we can work to improve the algorithm over time.

Thanks!
Jami
Groups Community Manager

P.S. Just to be clear, we see moderation as a positive not a negative.

P.S.S We don’t rank groups overall, just related to particular searches or categories. To see how your group ranks,  go to http://www.groups.yahoo.com and type a search term related to your group.

Ever wonder what privacy controls you have on Yahoo! Groups? Well, there are three settings that control who can join your group, who can find your group, and who can see your group messages that I wanted to highlight.

Membership Options
The first decision you need to make when starting a new group is what type of Membership settings (who can join your group), you want to enable. You can choose one of the following two settings:

• Open group – anyone can join
• Restricted group - new members need approval to join

Membership settings is found under: Management > Group Settings > Membership > Membership Type and Welcome Message. Click edit and choose the membership top at the top of the page and then click save changes.

Listing Options
You then need to choose whether or not you want your group listed in the Groups Directory (who can find your group).

• If you choose to have your group listed in the directory, then your group can be found by users searching or browsing through the Groups Directory.
• If, on the other hand, you choose to make your group unlisted, it will not be found in the Groups Directory.

Listings settings can be found under: Management > Group Settings > Description. Click edit and scroll down and you’ll see “listing type”, once you choose, click save changes.

Message Options
You also have three options for who can see your group messages:

• Anyone on the web can view them
• Only members can view them
• Only moderators can view them

Message option settings can be found under: Management > Group Settings > Messages > Posting and Archives. Click edit and choose the archive option you desire and then click save changes.

Please note that only group owners and moderators (if they have been given permission to change group settings) can change these group settings.

Best,
Jami
Groups Community Manager

A quick reminder that requests for help with your group should be sent to Customer Care. You can also search the Groups Help pages for answers to common questions.

The Groups Message Boards are another place to go to get Groups help and advice from fellow Groups users, including tips on member recruitment and group management, technical issues, and common challenges.

Thanks!
Jami
Groups Community Manager

In case you haven’t heard the latest news from Yahoo! Mail - if you weren’t able to get that special yahoo.com email address you had hoped for, now is your chance to try again. The only catch is that this time it will be an @ymail.com or @rocketmail.com email address (yup, for those of you who remember, we brought RocketMail back). You can read more about this news, and about the history of RocketMail by visiting the Yahoo! Mail blog.

One thing I wanted to point out to all of you Yahoo! Groups users is that if you do get one of these new @ymail.com or @rocketmail.com email address, you will be prompted to create a new public profile when joining or starting a new group. When creating your public profile, if the name you select as your “screen name” is already in use, you will be asked to choose a different name. Once you create your new profile, you will be taken back into the normal “join” or “start a group” flow.

A couple other things worth mentioning are:

• If you decide to register for one of these new email addresses, you cannot link it to an existing @yahoo.com account or easily import data from the existing account to the new account.

• If you decide to register for one of these new email addresses, you will also have to login to Groups with your full email address vs. just your ID as you do today. For example: xyz@ymail.com or xyz@rocketmail.com vs. just xyz, if I had an @yahoo.com email account.

Let me know if you have any questions by commenting below.

Best,
Jami
Groups Community Manager

Over the years we’ve seen a lot of speculation around how long it really takes for changes made to group settings to be reflected when users search and browse in the Groups directory. The truth is that some common changes have taken much longer than necessary to be reflected within the Groups directory.

Those days are gone! The Groups team made some backend changes to the Groups directory and as a result, the time it takes to see common changes within your group has been dramatically reduced.

It will now only take 2 to 24 hours for the common changes below to be reflected within the Groups directory:

• For a newly created group to appear within the Groups directory
• For a deleted group not to appear within the Groups directory
• For changes to the name of a group to be reflected within the Groups directory
• For changes to title or description of a group to be reflected within the Groups directory
• For changes to whether a group is listed or unlisted to be reflected within the Groups directory
• For changes to the category a group is listed in to be reflected within the Groups directory
• For changes to the group homepage photo to be reflected within the Groups directory
• For changes to options for making messages visible to public or private to be reflected within the Groups directory

…all within 2 to 24 hours of the change!

Do you have questions about how long others processes take on Yahoo! Groups? Add your questions to the comments below, and I’ll try to answer them in a future blog post.

Thanks!
Jami
Groups Community Manager

A home maker’s confidence boosted up beyond the four walls of her home, a trainer found the clientele for his training sessions without any marketing or website, a whistler could gather all the performers of this rare art in the country, that is the power of Yahoo! Groups and its Moderators.

To celebrate this power and recognize these moderators, Yahoo! India hosted its third Moderators’ Union in Mumbai on June 7^th at Sahara Star Hotel. This Moderators’ Union was very special because, in spite of heavy rains, there was a great turnout of enthusiastic attendees. Forty five moderators attended the event, coming from Delhi, Hyderabad, Madurai, Bhubaneswar, and Ahmadabad.

The event opened with a welcome message from Mr. I M Swaminathan, Director of Communication & Community Products, India. Following that were interesting introductions from each moderator and some fun quizzes. These moderators were from varied professional backgrounds, age groups and interests. They represented groups from finance, inspirational, professional, adventure, alumni, social cause, hobbies, just to name a few, and the common connection amongst such a variety of people was Yahoo! Groups. Next up was a Groups presentation, followed by product demos of Yahoo! India Local, Maps and a new Yahoo! India search experience. To wrap up, we presented awards for “Best Dressed Moderator”, “Best Introduction” and “Most Unique Group” based on nominations from attendees. There were two additional accolades for “Early Bird Guest” and “Guest who travelled longest distance”.

To get a glimpse of this event, check out the photo-stream on Flickr.

We plan to continue to host Moderator Union events across the cities of India and will keep you informed on dates and locations. In the meantime, keep enjoying Yahoo! Groups and Happy Moderating!

Best regards,
Shefali Gaur
Groups Community Manager, Yahoo! India

Over time I’ve been asked by several groups users what it takes to keep a product like Yahoo! Groups up and running, so I thought it would be fun to meet with Ian, the person who leads the team that does just that. I welcome you to spent the next three minutes listening to a short chat I had with Ian about what he and his team, the Groups Operations team, actually do to keep the groups site up and running.

Just click the audio link below my signature to play or download the podcast.

If you have any questions for Ian after listening to the podcast, please post them below. I’d also love to hear your suggestion for topics you’d want me to cover in future podcasts.

Thanks for listening!

***Click here for a copy of the transcript of this podcast.***

Jami
Groups Community Manager

 

 Keeping the Groups site up & running [3:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3643)

Update: 6/13 – The Y! Mail team is still working towards finding resolution to this issue. I am terribly sorry for the continued inconvenience. I’ll post an update when this issue gets resolved.

We are aware that there is a Yahoo! Mail issue that is currently causing some users to see html code (ex. “nbsp;”) within some Groups messages. We are currently working to resolve this issue and apologize for any inconvenience.

On a brighter note, we believe the problem causing some groups to have long load times, particularly when trying to access pending messages, has been fixed. If you find that you are still experiencing problems with long load times, please contact Customer Care at: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/general.html.

Thank you,
Jami
Groups Community Manager

Did you know that there’s an advanced message search feature within Yahoo! Groups?

Just click Advanced next to the search box on your group’s messages page, a new page opens up with options you can select to create a very specific search of messages within your group. This tool allows you to search for messages from a specific timeframe or date range, from a specific member, or by subject or topic.

Once you select your criteria and click the search button, all messages within the group that meets that criteria are returned.

This feature has saved me a bunch of time on more than one occasion and I hope you find it useful as well.

Best,
Jami
Groups Community  Manager