Way before WhatsApp became the rage and Facebook messenger brought in massive emoticons with all expressions, there used to be Yahoo Messenger with purple interface which inspired a whole generation and enticed them into chatting online with random strangers.
That legacy would be soon history now, as Yahoo has announced that the ‘old school’ Yahoo messenger would be expired on August 5th. Last year in December, when Yahoo introduced the new Yahoo Messenger, then speculations were rife that the old and new one would be integrated, so that traditional and native users would be able to transform easily.
However, Yahoo has decided to ditch the old one completely, and start a new beginning.
Amotz Maimon, Chief Architect at Yahoo announced this news via blog post, where he said, “While today we provide basic interoperation between the legacy product and the new Messenger, we encourage all of our users to complete their transition to the new Yahoo Messenger as we will no longer support the legacy platform as of August 5, 2016.”
Streamlining their focus, Yahoo has now decided to concentrate only on 7 core products which are: Mail, Search, Tumblr, News, Sports, Finance and Lifestyles.
The new Yahoo Messenger has been made an integral part of Yahoo Mail, but users cannot download it on desktop as it was the case earlier This new Yahoo Messenger provides a seamless experience across mobile, desktop and app; something which was absent from the ‘old school Yahoo messenger’; and to access it, the user will need to sign in from their Yahoo id, just like Google Hangouts or Facebook Messenger and/or install it on their Android and iOS gadgets.
As per Yahoo, all previous conversations of legacy Yahoo Messenger would be available till August 5th, after which it would be needed to download in order to access.
New Yahoo Messenger’s Unique Offerings
The ability to ‘unsend’ a message seems to be the most innovative feature of the new Yahoo messenger.
Besides, the new Yahoo Messenger incorporates better photo sharing options, using which the user can share more than one HD photos all at once; the feature to ‘like’ a photo or GIF, something inspired from Facebook; ability to share animated GIFs with friends or groups and a new ‘offline and low connectivity mode’ for those users who are browsing Internet at slow speed.
Besides discontinuing the old school Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Recommends has also been shut down effective September 1st, 2016. Yahoo Recommends is a Content Discovery tool.
Earlier this year, Yahoo had announced that they are killing several products such as Yahoo Games, Yahoo LiveText, Build Your Own Search Engine, Yahoo Astrology, and some regional news portals in Middle East and Europe.
