Yahoo!Xtra

Yahoo!Xtra was a New Zealand joint venture between Yahoo!7 and Telecom New Zealand (now Spark) that provided a web portal under the same name. Yahoo!7 held a 51 percent stake in the company and Telecom NZ held 49 percent. Because Yahoo!7 is a 50/50 venture, Yahoo! proper was therefore a 25.5% owner of Yahoo!Xtra. Telecom announced in April 2011 that it had sold its share to Yahoo!7 and Yahoo!Xtra was rebranded as Yahoo! New Zealand.^[1][2]

Yahoo!Xtra

Company type	Joint venture
Industry	Media
Founded	December 2006
Headquarters	Auckland, New Zealand
Area served	Yahoo!7 and Telecom New Zealand
Services	Internet portal
Number of employees	30+ in Auckland 10 in Sydney
Website	https://nz.yahoo.com/

Yahoo!Xtra

Type of site	Internet portal
Owner	Telecom New Zealand and Yahoo!7
URL	https://nz.yahoo.com/
Registration	Optional
Launched	March 2007

History

XtraMSN

Telecom launched Internet service provider Xtra in 1996, which was New Zealand's largest ISP (as of 2008^[update]). In 2001 Telecom partnered with MSN to create the web portal XtraMSN, which by 2006 was receiving over 100 million total page impressions per month. Visitor numbers to XtraMSN grew by 45 percent in its last two years and the website attracted more than 3 million unique browsers per month.^[3]

Move to Yahoo

In December 2006, Telecom made a new agreement, founding a joint venture with Australia's Yahoo!7 – itself a joint company between the Seven Network and Yahoo! – to form Yahoo!Xtra. The six-year-old Telecom and Microsoft portal ended on 1 March 2007, with the users invited to go to either YahooXtra.co.nz or Msn.co.nz.

Telecom reportedly left the content management of the portal to Yahoo!, who operate an Auckland-based office consisting of Sales, Marketing, Ad Operations, Production and Finance Departments. The Editorial team manages local news, sport and entertainment content.^[4][5]

When Telecom sold out in 2011, Yahoo!Xtra staff transferred to Yahoo! New Zealand. Telecom noted that Yahoo!7 would continue to support Telecom's broadband customers.^[1][2]

Xtra Mail

Even after Telecom divested its stake in Yahoo!Xtra, Yahoo! continued to manage Telecom's email service for its users. This arrangement faced significant criticism in early 2013, particularly after a massive spam and phishing attack. This incident was noted as the largest cyberattack ever to impact New Zealand,^[6] leading to widespread concern among users and stakeholders. In response to the severity of the situation, Telecom took immediate action by automatically resetting the passwords for thousands of users to safeguard their accounts and mitigate potential damage from the attack.^[7] Despite these challenges and the negative publicity surrounding the service, in April of the same year, Telecom made the decision to retain Yahoo! as their email service provider,^[8] citing ongoing commitment and service needs.

In the period between September 2016 and April 2017, Telecom had rebranded itself as Spark New Zealand. During this time, the company undertook a significant migration of the Xtra Mail service from Yahoo! to its own domain, spark.co.nz.^[9] This transition marked a pivotal shift as Spark aimed to enhance the email experience for its users. To facilitate this migration and improve the overall service quality, Spark established a partnership with a local New Zealand email provider, SMX.^[9] This collaboration was intended to ensure that users would benefit from safer, more reliable email services moving forward, marking an important evolution for Telecom's email offerings.

Promotion

Yahoo!Xtra's 'X meets Y' promotion at launch featured a television commercial with Regina Spektor's song "Fidelity" playing whilst a young couple undertake in a lingering kiss. This helped throw the anti-folk star under the spotlight in the New Zealand music scene, "Fidelity" becoming a hit single and one of Spektor's most successful tracks.^[10]