Yahoo! Mail Tutorials

Connecting With Others in Yahoo! Mail

NOTE: This is a beta Yahoo! Mail feature, which is not yet available to all users.
What Are Connections? Adding Connections Seeing Emails From People You Know Viewing Updates Viewing Profiles Turning Connections Off and On

What Are Connections?

Liam stays in touch with his connections

Connections are contacts with special status. They’re the people you spend the most time with online and the ones you care most about sharing information with. Typically your connections are the people that you actually want to get email from and to stay in touch with (as opposed to those others whose messages clutter your Inbox).

 

Why Do I Want Connections in Yahoo! Mail?

Tip: Click here to learn more about the non-connection features of the What’s New tab, your personal Mail home page.

Yahoo! Mail supports special access to your connections in several ways, right from the Mail home page:

The Mail home page supports special access to your connections

  • Yahoo! Mail makes it easy to add new connections—see Adding Connections From Mail for the details

  • New incoming email messages from your connections and other contacts appear right on your Mail home page. You can also filter the messages in your Inbox or any other folder to see just those from your connections or from your contacts. See Seeing Emails From People You Know for more information.

  • Updates from your connections and people you’ve invited to share Updates also display right on the Mail home page. Viewing Others’ Updates tells you more about this feature.

Tip: In Yahoo! terms, "connecting with someone" and "sharing Updates with someone" are equivalent—two people agree to share information with each other that isn’t available to just anyone with a Yahoo! ID. Just what that information is depends on each person’s Updates sharing settings. See the Working With Yahoo! Updates tutorial for more information about managing the Updates your share.

Connecting Safely

Remember that your connections should be the people with whom you feel most comfortable sharing personal information. This means that you should only connect with folks you really know, not with people you’ve barely met. Even with people you know, be thoughtful about the information, messages, and images that you share. Are they really things you want all your connections to see?

You should also feel free to break a connection with any user at any time if you feel uncomfortable. See the tutorial Connecting With Others for more information.

 

Here’s How

To see who you’re already connected to:

  1. Go to the Yahoo! Mail home page.

  2. Click the Contacts link in the left column.

    Click the Contacts link.

    The Contacts tab opens, showing a list of all your contacts.

  3. From the filtering menu on the left, select Connections.

    Select Connections from the menu

    Now the contact list is filtered to display only your connections.

    Just your connections are listed in Contacts.

    Tip: You can also get directly to the list of your connections in Yahoo! Contacts by clicking the Manage your Connections link on the What’s New tab. This link is visible if you have unread emails from connections in your Inbox.

    Click the Manage your Connections link to see all your connections.

 

What’s Next

To get started taking advantage of Yahoo! Mail’s connection features, you need to make connections with your friends and family.

 
 
 

Words to Know

  • Connection: a person you spend significant time online with and with whom you want to share personal information. Connections have privileged access to each others’ profiles.
  • Contact: a person with whom you interact; someone to whom you might want to send an email, instant message, or text message.
  • Folder: a container that holds individual elements specific to the context; for example, email messages in Yahoo! Mail.
  • Inbox: a folder where you receive incoming email.
  • Updates: brief messages about profile changes and other activities on Yahoo! that are automatically shared between connections.