In a sweeping bit of irony (I’ll get to that part in just a moment), My Yahoo!’s just-announced facelift looks more like its long-lost rival My Netscape than its former self. The new interface is cleaner than the previous jumble, feeling far less like a grab for every last ounce of attention. It’s more customizable, allowing you to augment Yahoo!’s pre-fab offerings with the information sources you follow, drawn in via the wonders of RSS syndication. And a smattering of JavaScript behind the scenes brings interactivity in the form of disclosing, hiding, removing, and reordering information from your chosen sources without need of Update buttons and clunky page refreshes.

The My Yahoo! beta roll-out accompanies a roll-out of a brand new look for the Yahoo! home page. There, too, things have been tidied and tightened substantially. While no minimalist Google interface, it certainly feels more like something designed rather than accreted. There are tabs across the top for major Yahoo! properties and a Y! Services box with links to all the rest. And the in-your-face advertising has been toned down a touch as well–and not a moment too soon for my tastes.

Now for the ironic bit I mentioned. Having discovered, toyed with, and now dived feet-first into RSS syndication and notification, My Yahoo! returns to the very roots of RSS itself: a way for My Netscape to take on My Yahoo! without the unnecessary fuss of having to pay for content. As I wrote on XML.com back in mid 2000:

[RSS] was introduced in 1999 by Netscape as a channel description framework for their My Netscape Network (MNN) portal. While the “My” concept itself wasn’t anything earth-shattering, Netscape’s content-gathering mechanism was rather novel. This simple XML application established a mutually beneficial relationship between Netscape, content providers, and end-users.

By providing a simple snapshot-in-a-document, web site producers acquired audience through the presence of their content on My Netscape. End-users got one-stop-reading, a centralized location into which content from their favorite web sites flowed, rather than just the sanitized streams of content syndicated into most portals. And My Netscape, of course, acquired content for free.

Now, with enough RSS-syndicated content to make you feel like you’re drinking from a firehose, My Yahoo! can reap the rewards of My Netscape’s idea (perhaps a little too early to have the kind of mass-market appeal of today.)

And the irony isn’t lost on the Yahoo! team, mind you; after all, a couple of members of the original My Netscape crew–including Eckart Walther, Netscape parent of RSS 0.9–are working for Yahoo!.

Click the Add Content link at the top left of your My Yahoo! page and, rather than the laundry list of news sources and infotizers you might have come across and summarily dismissed, you’re given the option to snap in pre-fab components, search for content of potential interest to you (from fishing to smartphoning), or simply paste in the URLs of your favourite RSS feeds.

You’ll notice there’s nary an orange [XML] icon in sight and only passing mention of RSS as an alternate form of subscription. Remember, RSS aggregator fans, this is targeted at your Aunt Joan and sister’s friend’s father–the uninitiated for whom a nice, clean, well-lighted news site is more than enough and the new flexibility a new vista of content to explore.

(I’ve often likened the [XML] button to a picture of a transmission on a sign at the airport pointing the way to the rental car center.)

Nevertheless, on the most requested list are sure to be: provide a more RSS aggregator-like view of all content across sources; import subscriptions in OPML format; allow items to be marked as read/unread, saved or sent on to friends; and other such features in constant use by those who live in their desktop- or Web-based aggregator.

Has Yahoo! turned over a new leaf? Will they pay attention to design and stay the course rather than packing in more ads and hidden-in-plain-sight links to services most folks simply overlook? That remains to be seen, but the new My Yahoo! certainly is a good start and one that’s sure to be watched by rivals Google, A9, et al.

(The new Yahoo! and My Yahoo! home pages being beta, you have to explicitly flip a switch to make them available to yourself.)

Do you Yahoo!?