She may be getting cheered on Wall Street, but Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is getting a thumbs-down from users of the company’s email and chat forums.
Thousands of users have complained to Yahoo about its latest redesign that eliminated some popular features while adding others they find clunky and confusing.
“We have refreshed your inbox with more room for messages and added exciting new features you will love,” the Internet giant told users when it relaunched Yahoo Mail last week.
But rather than applaud the overhaul, users have flooded the company’s “feature suggestions” page to demand changes be rolled back and old features restored.
“I HATE IT! Please bring back the old version of yahoo classic,” wrote one aggrieved user on the site.
One of the biggest complaints has been Yahoo’s removal of the email’s “tabs” feature, which allowed users to open multiple emails at once.
A post headlined “Please Bring Back Tabs” has floated to the top of the suggestions page after attracting a whopping 47,302 votes and 3,608 comments as of Thursday afternoon.
The author of the post said that tabs is one of the reasons he uses Yahoo Mail over Gmail, echoing complaints on the site that the new interface mimics Google’s system. Mayer was a top executive at Google before she took the CEO job at Yahoo last summer.
“If I wanted to use Gmail, I would do that,” one user griped on the suggestions site. “You didn’t study the customer usability before changing your system, did you?”
A spokeswoman for Yahoo dismissed the complaints as normal, saying “it is typical to see varied reaction” with “any significant product change.” But she also indicated that some of the concerns could be addressed down the road.
“User feedback is extremely important to us — we are actively listening to our users and will continue to iterate on our products to provide the best user experience possible.” she said.
Users are also griping about changes to Yahoo Groups, where users gather to chat about everything from adopting children to swapping recipes.
“Yahoo groups was head and shoulders above other groups. Now it’s even worse than Google groups or Facebook. Slow, not user friendly and useless!” one user complained in a comment on the Yahoo Products page.
The site redesigns are part of Mayer’s strategy to boost revenues by attracting more eyeballs and ad dollars — a vision that has pushed the stock up a whopping 65 percent this year.
In a webcast to discuss third-quarter earnings on Tuesday, Mayer touted multiple new products and redesigns to sites such as Yahoo Sports, which has experienced a 50 percent pop in traffic.
Mobile users of Yahoo Mail also grew by 20 percent, according to Mayer, but it’s unclear whether that number will hold up if loyal users follow through on their threat to jump ship.
“Bring back original Yahoo mail,” one user griped on the suggestion page for features. “I’m sick of this never ending improvement.”