Yahoo fe-Mail

These days, Yahoo! Mail users from India have a great new reason to keep coming back to their mailbox often. And those who don't have a Yahoo! ID can trash GMail, HMail and all that, and sign up with Yahoo! India. The reason: Malaika Arora (Khan) has been roped in as eye candy for the promos!!!

Yippie, now I'm gonna sign up for 100 new IDs myself. Just to catch a glimpse of that beautiful smile. See a logical disconnect there? I'm amazed, even disconcerted at Yahoo!'s desperation.

I know nothing about advertising etc, but I have observed that good ads don't need any star value. Seen the Tata Indica ad where the guy gets boxed left and right? He isn't Sachin Tendulkar or Amitabh Bachchan, but the ad is a zillion times better than most others - and it conveys the message. Stars do add some value to the ad, but whether they can carry it all along by themselves is debatable - almost improbable. Of course a dud product will fail irrespective of who is roped in to hawk it.

In the first place, we should seek to know if an online mail service is such a valuable commodity to be advertised. Also, an advertisement should have a pay-off (get Shahrukh in, sell more Santros - fair deal). What does Yahoo! aim to achieve by this? A spurt in the number of people who are going to sign in? I don't think so. Yahoo! doesn't need to entice me in such ways to continue using their mail service.

As more and more users start becoming tech-savvy, they look for features and value-adds, rather than a needless picture. Have you used GMail? Seen the ticker that increases the size of the mailbox each second? That's what the future's about. That's what we like to see. That's what keeps us glued. Not some Chaiya Chaiya female who has been forgotten after her 15 minutes of fame have come to an end.

P.S.: A hundred GMail invites available with me. Interested? -:)