Today despite a running nose and sore throat, I am here with my e-commerce team brainstorming on the exciting offers paving way for the 1st Anniversary of Yahoo!Deals.  
Hong Kong is well known to be a small city where people can easily buy anything they want within 10 minutes of walking distance. One could hardly imagine why online purchase is made possible here.
The culture and affinity for e-commerce could be traced back to 1999 when Yahoo!Hong Kong first rooted in this international Finance hub. Yahoo! here has been growing with the local community during the first decade of internet development in town including the introduction of Yahoo!Auctions by then. Yahoo! Hong Kong has therefore been a trusted environment for e-commerce with the best localization and relevance. This undoubtedly paved the way for the Yahoo! Deals.
To me, it has been eye-opening everyday discovering the huge market potential for Yahoo!Deals, the No. 1 group-buying platform in Hong Kong. There is so much fun and so much to learn which could only be possible within the trusted portal enjoying over 90% portal reach in Hong Kong.
Yahoo!Deals is NOT the first market mover in offering group buy in Hong Kong. Nonetheless, leveraging the proven experience on Yahoo!Auctions established over a decade and the over-whelming traffic for the portal, I am pleased to witness Deals growing from scratch to ranking top in user reach in just one month since its launch in June 2011. Amazing milestones kept rolling in since then. The first exclusive offer was launched successfully last August followed by the very first group buy offer partnering with HK Disneyland in September.
The daily number of offers scaled up from 12 last June to 320 on Yahoo!Deals today. The more the users indulge in the convenience brought about by Yahoo!Deals, the faster we see the trend of the hottest buy moving up from impulsive buying of Food & Beverages, Tuition Classes, Beauty items to Consumer/Household durables such as dehumidifiers and even travel packages costing USD 900 per head! Recently, we achieved yet another record high for Deals - over 5,400 pair of kids’shoes were all sold out in 3 days, this is something that could not have happened for any physical retail store as complimented by the merchant.
I have been with telecom and airline industries before joining Yahoo! Hong Kong. Although the momentum for the two industries has been robust and competitive across Asia Pacific, I find the beauty and power of the internet incomparable. This is especially true with e-commerce of Yahoo! Hong Kong. I am so proud to take part in this new wave of group buying which has changed the game for the entire e-commerce marketplace in addition to enriching the online shopping convenience. So, you see why I am empowered to give my best shot everyday.
Mark Liu,e-Commerce Director, Yahoo! Hong Kong

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series entitled, “In My Own Words,” that gives employees the opportunity to share their own stories about Yahoo!. 

Exploring the Yahoo! homepage just got a lot more fun. To kick off the new year, the Brand Marketing team is rolling out a series of Y! Bang animations that will appear on the homepage, periodically replacing Yahoo!’s familiar purple logo. Along with reflecting the lively energy of the brand, the animations will be timed to celebrate notable occasions and raise awareness for meaningful causes.

“Among other things, the Yahoo! brand is fun, and these animations are a representation of that,” says Connor Smith, Brand Marketing Associate in the Global Brand Marketing team.

Connor and the Brand team plan to develop close to 40 animated designs for 2012. The current animation is for Chinese New Year. In this animation a rabbit hops into the scene, pauses, and then bolts out as a dragon walks in.

“The animation is a tongue and cheek reference to the Chinese zodiac- 2011 is the year of the rabbit, and 2012 is the year of the dragon” explains Connor.

Clicking on the animation will bring you to a relevant Yahoo! page, providing a deeper user experience, whether it be more fun or more facts. The Chinese New Year animation will link to a page on Chinese astrology within Shine’s horoscope section. Some of the more cause-related animations, such as the breast-cancer awareness and World Aids Day designs, will provide additional Yahoo!-generated information on the issues.

Click here to view the Chinese New Year logo which appear on Yahoo! from midnight to midnight on January 23rd. Stay tuned for the next animation – this time for the Superbowl -- on the Yahoo! homepage.

What moment in 2011 stands out in your mind? The space shuttle launching into space one final time? An earthquake and tsunami that, in a matter of minutes, devastated a country? A royal wedding destined to be talked about for decades? As we wrap up the year, Flickr has pulled together a Year in Photos 2011 Gallery that covers several of the moving, emotionally charged, and surprising images that captivated us this year. Some of these images were captured using the most sophisticated digital cameras to date, while others were taken using the latest smartphones. Regardless, each photo captures a moment perfectly. Of course, this wouldn’t be possible without the help of our Flickr community, who helped us reach new heights in 2011, including more than 6 billion photos now stored on Flickr and more than 200 million images now available through our Creative Commons  service. Many thanks to all of the Flickr members who provided photos for this collection, and here’s to 2012 and capturing even more memorable moments.

See the Year in Photos 2011 on Flickr.