Yahoo! Messenger (sometimes abbreviated Y!M) was an

advertisement Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

-supported

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and tri ...

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuabl ...

and associated protocol provided by

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Mana ...

. Yahoo! Messenger was provided free of charge and could be downloaded and used with a generic "Yahoo ID" which also allowed access to other Yahoo! services, such as

Yahoo! Mail Yahoo! Mail is an email service launched on October 8, 1997, by the American company Yahoo, Inc. The service is free for personal use, with an optional monthly fee for additional features. Business email was previously available with the Yahoo! ...

. The service also offered

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

, file transfers, webcam hosting, a text messaging service, and chat rooms in various categories. Yahoo! Messenger dates back to Yahoo! Chat, which was a public chat room service. The actual client, originally called Yahoo! Pager, launched on March 9, 1998 and renamed to Yahoo! Messenger in 1999. The chat room service shut down in 2012. In addition to instant messaging features similar to those offered by ICQ, it also offered (on

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

) features such as: IMVironments (customizing the look of Instant Message windows, some of which include authorized themes of various cartoons such as ''

Garfield ''Garfield'' is an American comic strip created by Jim Davis. Originally published locally as ''Jon'' in 1976, then in nationwide syndication from 1978 as ''Garfield'', it chronicles the life of the title character Garfield the cat, his hum ...

'' or ''

Dilbert ''Dilbert'' is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Scott Adams, first published on April 16, 1989. It is known for its satirical office humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office with engineer Dilbert as the title charact ...

''), address-book integration and Custom Status Messages. It was also the first major IM client to feature BUZZing and music-status. A new Yahoo! Messenger was released in 2015, replacing the older one. Yahoo! Messenger was shut down entirely on July 17, 2018, replaced by a new service titled Yahoo! Together, only to be shut down as well in 2019.

Features

File sharing

Yahoo! Messenger offered file sending capabilities to its users. Files could be up to 2 GB each. After the software's relaunch, only certain media files could be shared: photos, animated GIFs and videos. It also allowed album sharing, with multiple media files in one IM. The animated GIF feature integrated with

Tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to ...

, also owned by Yahoo! at that time.

Likes

The new Yahoo! Messenger added a

like button A like button, like option, or recommend button, is a feature in communication software such as social networking services, Internet forums, news websites and blogs where the user can express that they like, enjoy or support certain content. ...

to messages and media. It was basic in functionality, adding a heart when clicked and listing contacts who added a like.

Unsend

The new Yahoo! Messenger allowed messages to be unsent, deleting them from both the sender and the receiver's messaging page.

Group conversations (formerly Yahoo! Chat)

The new Yahoo! Messenger allowed private group conversations. Yahoo! Chat was a free online chat room service provided exclusively for Yahoo! users. Yahoo! Chat was first launched on January 7, 1997. Yahoo! Chat was a separate vertical on Yahoo! In its original form, Yahoo! Chat was a user-to-user text chat service used by millions worldwide. Soon after launch, Yahoo! Chat partnered with NBC and NewsCorp to produce moderated Chat Events. Yahoo! Chat events eventually developed broadcast partnerships with 100+ entities and hosted 350+ events-a-month. Yahoo's Live Chat with the music group Hanson on July 21, 1998, was the Internet's largest live event to date. The blockbusters kept on with events including 3 Beatles (Paul, George, Ringo), a live event from Columbine during the tragedy (in partnership with Time Online), live chats from outer space with John Glenn and many others. Sadly, in one of Yahoo's poorer decisions, Yahoo! Chat Events were discontinued in 2001, right at the start of the social media era. On March 9, 1998, the first public version of Yahoo! Pager was released, with Yahoo! Chat among its features. It allowed users to create public chat rooms, send private messages, and use emoticons. In June 2005, with no advance warning, Yahoo disabled users' ability to create their own chat rooms. The move came after

KPRC-TV KPRC-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Houston, Texas, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Graham Media Group. Its studios are located on Southwest Freeway (I-69/US 59) in the Southwest Management District (formerly Greater ...

Houston, Texas Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...

reported that many of the user-created rooms were geared toward

pedophilia Pedophilia ( alternatively spelt paedophilia) is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Although girls typically begin the process of puberty ...

. The story prompted several advertisers, including Pepsi and

Georgia-Pacific Georgia-Pacific LLC is an American pulp and paper company based in Atlanta, Georgia, and is one of the world's largest manufacturers and distributors of tissue, pulp, paper, toilet and paper towel dispensers, packaging, building products and ...

, to pull their ads from Yahoo. On November 30, 2012, Yahoo announced that among other changes that the public chat rooms would be discontinued as of December 14, 2012. quoting "This will enable us to refocus our efforts on modernizing our core Yahoo products experiences and of course, create new ones." Until the chat rooms became unavailable on December 14, 2012, all versions of Yahoo! Messenger could access Yahoo chat rooms. Yahoo has since closed down the chat.yahoo.com site (first having it redirect visitors to a section of the Yahoo! Messenger page, but as of June 2019 not even resolving that host name anymore) because the great majority of chat users accessed it through Messenger. The company worked for a while on a way to allow users to create their own rooms while providing safeguards against abuse. A greyed-out option to "create a room" was available until the release of version 11.

Voice and video

As of January 2014, the iOS version supported voice calls, with video calling on some devices. The Android version supported "voice & video calls (

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...

)". From September 2016, Yahoo! Messenger no longer offered webcam service on their computer application. Yahoo's software previously allowed users with newer versions (8 through 10) to use webcams. This option enabled users from distances all over the world to view others who had installed a webcam on their end. The service was free with provided speeds averaging from a range in between 1 and 2 frames per second. The resolution of the images could be seen starting at 320×240 pixels or 160×120.

Protocol

The Yahoo! Messenger Protocol (YMSG) was the client's underlying

network protocol A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics and synchroniza ...

. It provided a language and series of conventions for software communicating with Yahoo!'s Instant Messaging service. In essence, YMSG performed the same role for Yahoo!'s IM as

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...

does for the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

. Unlike HTTP, however, YMSG was a proprietary protocol, a closed standard aligned only with the Yahoo! messaging service. Rival messaging services have their own protocols, some based on open standards, others proprietary, each effectively fulfilling the same role with different mechanics. One of the fundamental tenets of instant messaging is the notion that users can see when someone is connected to the network—known in the industry as 'presence'. The YMSG protocol used the mechanics of a standard internet connection to achieve presence—the same connection it used to send and receive data. In order for each user to remain 'visible' to other users on the service, and thereby signaling their availability, their Yahoo! IM client software maintained a functional, open, network connection linking the client to Yahoo!'s IM servers.

URI scheme

Yahoo! Messenger's installation process automatically installed an extra

uniform resource identifier A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a unique sequence of characters that identifies a logical or physical resource used by web technologies. URIs may be used to identify anything, including real-world objects, such as people and places, conc ...

(URI) scheme handler for the Yahoo! Messenger Protocol into some web browsers, so that URIs beginning ymsgr could open a new Yahoo! Messenger window with specified parameters. This is similar in function to the mailto URI scheme, which creates a new e-mail message using the system's default mail program. For instance, a web page might include a link like the following in its HTML source to open a window for sending a message to the YIM user ''exampleuser'': <a href="ymsgr:sendim?exampleuser">Send Message</a> To specify a message body, the m parameter was used, so that the link location might look like this: ymsgr:sendim?exampleuser&m=This+is+my+message Other commands were: * ymsgr:sendim?''yahooid'' * ymsgr:addfriend?''yahooid'' * ymsgr:sendfile?''yahooid'' * ymsgr:call?''yahooid'' * ymsgr:callPhone?''phonenumber'' * ymsgr:im – opened the "Send an IM" window * ymsgr:customstatus?''A+custom+status'' – changed the status message * ymsgr:getimv?''imvname'' – loaded an IMVironment (example: ymsgr:getimv?doodle, ymsgr:getimv?yfighter)

Interoperability

On October 13, 2005, Yahoo and Microsoft announced plans to introduce interoperability between their two messengers, creating the second-largest real-time communications service userbase worldwide: 40 percent of all users. The announcement came after years of third-party interoperability success (most notably, Trillian and

Pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...

) and criticisms that the major real-time communications services were locking their networks. Microsoft has also had talks with AOL in an attempt to introduce further interoperability, but AOL was unwilling to participate. Interoperability between Yahoo and Windows Live Messenger was launched July 12, 2006. This allowed Yahoo and Windows Live Messenger users to chat to each other without the need to create an account on the other service, provided both contacts used the latest versions of the clients. It was not possible to talk using the voice service between the two different messengers. As of December 14, 2012, the interoperability between Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger ceased to exist. The Live Messenger contacts appeared as greyed out and it was not possible to send instant messages to them.

Games

There were various games and applications available that can be accessed via the conversation window by clicking the games icon and challenging your current contact. It requires

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

to function. As of April 18, 2014, games were removed from Yahoo! Messenger.

Plug-ins

In version 8.0, Yahoo! Messenger featured the ability for users to create plug-ins, which are then hosted and showcased on the Yahoo chat room. Yahoo now no longer provides plugin development SDK. Yahoo! Messenger users could listen to free and paid

Internet radio Online radio (also web radio, net radio, streaming radio, e-radio, IP radio, Internet radio) is a digital audio service transmitted via the Internet. Broadcasting on the Internet is usually referred to as webcasting since it is not transmitted ...

services, using the defunct Yahoo! Music Radio plug-in from within the messenger window. The plug-in also player functionality, such as play, pause, skip and rate this song.

Adoption

As of August 2000, according to Media Metrix, Yahoo! Messenger had about 10.6 million users in the U.S., about the same as

MSN Messenger MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as "Messenger"), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a cross-platform instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the Microsoft Messenger service and, in later versio ...

but trailing

AOL Instant Messenger AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) was an instant messaging and presence computer program created by AOL, which used the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time. AIM w ...

. However another analyst doubted the figures for Yahoo! and MSN. As of the month of September 2001, over five billion instant messages were sent on the network, up 115% from the year before, according to Media Metrix. Another study in August 2002 showed that it had a 16.7 percent share of IM work and home subscribers in the U.S., compared to 24.1 percent for MSN and 28.3 percent for AIM. In April 2002, 19.1 million people in the U.S. used Yahoo! Messenger, according to Media Metrix. Another study from

Nielsen Net Ratings Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the Nielsen rati ...

showed that as of 2002, Yahoo! Messenger had some 12 million users worldwide. This increased to 22 million by March 2006. Yahoo! Messenger was the dominant instant messaging platform among commodity traders until the platform was discontinued in August 2016. At the time of Yahoo! Messenger's closure in 2018, it remained popular in

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making ...

Software

As of March 27, 2016, the only supported clients were the Android, iOS and web browser clients. The previous Windows, Mac, Unix and Solaris clients were not supported anymore, and their servers began shutting down on August 5, 2016, with the clients no longer working by August 31, 2016. It turned out that the servers for the legacy clients were finally shut down sometime between the mid-morning and early afternoon hours Eastern Standard Time on September 1, 2016, resulting in the legacy desktop clients no longer being able to access their buddy/contact lists. As of 2018 (with the last version), Yahoo! Messenger was available for computers as a web service, including both a messenger-only site and

integration. Apps were also available on Android and iOS.

could connect to Yahoo! Messenger by using th
FunYahoo++
plugin. Mobile versions of Yahoo! Messenger were launched originally for

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) was a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is pro ...

and

Windows CE Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products. Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is base ...

devices. In a deal signed March 2000, Yahoo! Messenger would come bundled on

Palm Palm most commonly refers to: * Palm of the hand, the central region of the front of the hand * Palm plants, of family Arecaceae **List of Arecaceae genera * Several other plants known as "palm" Palm or Palms may also refer to: Music * Palm (ba ...

handheld computers. It was also available for

Verizon Wireless Verizon is an American wireless network operator that previously operated as a separate division of Verizon Communications under the name Verizon Wireless. In a 2019 reorganization, Verizon moved the wireless products and services into the div ...

customers, through a deal with Yahoo! announced in March 2001, and through Sprint's MiniBrowser. A version for the

T-Mobile Sidekick II The Danger Hiptop, also re-branded as the T-Mobile Sidekick, Mobiflip and Sharp Jump is a GPRS/ EDGE/ UMTS smartphone that was produced by Danger, Inc. from 2002 to 2010. The Hiptop software was designed by Danger, Inc., which was located in ...

was released in 2004. This was to be followed by versions for

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

(via

Yahoo! Go Yahoo! Go was a Java-based phone application provided by Yahoo! for users to access the company's products and services via their mobile phones or PDAs. Up till its closure, Yahoo! considered Go as Beta software. Services include sending/receiving ...

BlackBerry The blackberry is an edible fruit produced by many species in the genus ''Rubus'' in the family Rosaceae, hybrids among these species within the subgenus ''Rubus'', and hybrids between the subgenera ''Rubus'' and ''Idaeobatus''. The taxonomy ...

, and then for iPhone in April 2009. A version called Yahoo! Messenger for SMS also existed, which allowed IM via

SMS Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...

History

Yahoo! Pager launched on March 9, 1998, an instant messaging (IM) client integrated with Yahoo! services including Yahoo! Chat. It included basic messaging support, a buddy list with status message support, the ability to block other users, alerts when a buddies came online, and notifications when a new

message arrived. In 2000, the name changed to Yahoo! Messenger. Version 5.0, released November 2001, introduced IMVironments, an initiative that allowed users to play music and

Flash Video Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content (e.g., TV shows, movies, etc.) over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There ar ...

clips inside the IM window. Yahoo! partnered with rock band

Garbage Garbage, trash, rubbish, or refuse is waste material that is discarded by humans, usually due to a perceived lack of utility. The term generally does not encompass bodily waste products, purely liquid or gaseous wastes, or toxic waste produ ...

that provided their single "

Androgyny Androgyny is the possession of both masculine and feminine characteristics. Androgyny may be expressed with regard to biological sex, gender identity, or gender expression. When ''androgyny'' refers to mixed biological sex characteristics in ...

" available to share by users. Other partnerships also made IMVironments for the '' Monsters, Inc.'' movie, the ''

Super Smash Bros. Melee ''Super Smash Bros. Melee'' is a 2001 crossover fighting video game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the GameCube. It is the second installment in the ''Super Smash Bros.'' series. It features characters from Nintendo ...

'' video game, and the Hello Kitty character, among others. In August 2002 with the release of version 5.5, the resolution for video calling was increased to a possible 320x240 and 20 frames per second (up from 160x120 and 1 frame per second). From October 2002, Yahoo! offered for corporate subscribers a more secure and better (

SSL SSL may refer to: Entertainment * RoboCup Small Size League, robotics football competition * ''Sesame Street Live'', a touring version of the children's television show * StarCraft II StarLeague, a Korean league in the video game Natural language ...

) encrypted IM client, called Yahoo! Messenger Enterprise Edition. It was released with a $30 yearly subscription package in 2003. Yahoo! Messenger version 6.0 was released in May 2004. It added games, music, photos, and

Yahoo! Search Yahoo! Search is a Yahoo! internet search provider that uses Microsoft's Microsoft Bing, Bing search engine to power results, since 2009, apart from four years with Google Search, Google until 2019. Originally, "Yahoo! Search" referred to a Yah ...

, alongside a "stealth" mode. It also debuted Yahoo! Avatars. With the release of version 7.0 in August 2005, the client was now renamed to Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. It had several new features such as

voicemail A voicemail system (also known as voice message or voice bank) is a computer-based system that allows users and subscribers to exchange personal voice messages; to select and deliver voice information; and to process transactions relating to ind ...

, drag-and-drop file and photo sharing,

Yahoo! 360° Yahoo! 360° was a social networking and personal communication portal operated by Yahoo! made available in 2005. It enabled users to create personal web sites, share photos from Yahoo! Photos, maintain blogs and lists, create and share a public ...

and LAUNCHcast integration, and others. It was seen as a challenger against

Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, debi ...

. On October 12, 2005, Yahoo! and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

formed an alliance in which Yahoo! Messenger and

(later known as Windows Live Messenger) will be interconnected, allowing users of both communities to communicate and share emoticons and buddy lists with each other. The service was enabled on Yahoo! Messenger with Voice 8.0 in July 2006. As of version 8.1, the name switched back to just Yahoo! Messenger. Beginning in 2006, Yahoo made known its intention to provide a web interface for Yahoo! Messenger, culminating in the Gmail-like web archival and indexing of chat conversations through Yahoo! Mail. However, while Yahoo! Mail integrated much of the rudimentary features of Messenger beginning in 2007, Yahoo did not succeed initially in integrating archival of chat conversations into Mail. Instead, a separate

Adobe Flex Apache Flex, formerly Adobe Flex, is a software development kit (SDK) for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich web applications based on the Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia ...

-based web messenger was released in 2007 with archival of conversations which take place inside the web messenger itself. At the

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event t ...

in January 2007, Yahoo! Messenger for Vista was introduced, which is a version designed and optimized for

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

. It exploited the new design elements of Vista's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and introduced a new user interface and features. The application was in a preview beta until finally released for download on December 6, 2007. As of October 24, 2008, Yahoo! Messenger for Vista is no longer available. In May 2007, Yahoo! Messenger for the Web was launched, a browser-based client of the IM service. Yahoo! Messenger version 9 was released in September 2008. It allows the viewing of

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

videos within the chat window, and integrates with other Yahoo! services such as

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and profession ...

. This version also saw the release of Pingbox, which embeds on a blog or website and allows visitors to send IM texts anonymously without needing Yahoo! Messenger software or to sign in. Version 10, released November 2009, incorporates many bug fixes and features high-quality video calling. The last major Windows client release, version 11 in 2011, featured integration with

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

and

Zynga Zynga Inc. () is an American developer running social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile and social networking platforms. Zynga states its missio ...

, allowing chat with Facebook friends and playing Zynga games within. It also archives past messages on an online server which is accessible through the client. Version 11.5 (released November 2011) added tabbed IMs. In December 2015, an all-new, rewritten Yahoo! Messenger was launched, only on mobile and through a browser. A desktop version of the "new" Messenger was later released, shortly before the "legacy" Messenger shut down on August 5, 2016.

Yahoo! Together

Yahoo! Together was a

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the ...

and

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...

messaging A message is a discrete unit of communication intended by the source for consumption by some recipient or group of recipients. A message may be delivered by various means, including courier, telegraphy, carrier pigeon and electronic bus. ...

service, developed by

for the Android and iOS mobile platforms. The software was introduced in

on May 8, 2018, as Yahoo! Squirrel to replace Yahoo! Messenger and Verizon Media's

. In October 2018, it was renamed to its present name. Yahoo! Together was targeted to families and the consumer market rather than enterprise. The app was compared to Slack. Less than a year after its public beta release, Yahoo! Together went offline on April 4, 2019.

Third-party clients

Third-party clients could also be used to access the original service. These included: * Adium * BitlBee * Centericq *

Empathy Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position. Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of social, co ...

Fire Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material (the fuel) in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. At a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition point, flames ...

imeem The online service imeem was a social media website where users interacted with each other by streaming, uploading and sharing music and music videos. It operated from 2003 until 2009 when it was shut down after being acquired by MySpace. The ...

IMVU IMVU (, stylized as imvu) is an online virtual world and social networking site. IMVU was founded in 2004 and was originally backed by venture investors Menlo Ventures, AllegisCyber Capital, Bridgescale Partners, and Best Buy Capital.

Kopete Kopete is a multi-protocol, free software instant messaging client released as part of the KDE Software Compilation. Although it can run in numerous environments, it was designed for and integrates with the KDE Plasma Workspaces. Kopete was star ...

meebo Meebo (often stylized as meebo) was an instant messaging and social networking service provider. It was founded in September 2005 by Sandy Jen, Seth Sternberg, and Elaine Wherry, and was based in Mountain View, California. Initially the company ...

* Meetro *

Miranda NG Miranda NG is an open-source multiprotocol instant messaging application, designed for Microsoft Windows. Miranda NG is free software distributed under the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later. History In May 2012 Miranda IM was forked to Miranda NG (New Ge ...

Paltalk Paltalk is a proprietary video group chat service that enables users to communicate by video, Internet chat, or voice. It offers chat rooms and the ability for users to create their own public virtual chat room. Paltalk Desktop is available on ma ...

* Trillian * Trillian Astra * Trillian Pro *

Windows Live Messenger MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as "Messenger"), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a cross-platform instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the Microsoft Messenger service and, in later versio ...

SPIM

Yahoo! Messenger users were subjected to unsolicited messages (

SPIM SPIM is a MIPS processor simulator, designed to run assembly language code for this architecture. The program simulates R2000 and R3000 processors, and was written by James R. Larus while a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. T ...

). Yahoo's primary solution to the issue involved deleting such messages and placing the senders on an Ignore List. , it was estimated that at least 75% of all users who used Yahoo chat rooms were bots. Yahoo introduced a CAPTCHA system to help filter out bots from joining chat rooms, but such systems generally do little to prevent abuse by spammers.

Security

On November 4, 2014, the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ...

listed Yahoo! Messenger on its "Secure Messaging Scorecard". Yahoo! Messenger received 1 out of 7 points on the scorecard. It received a point for encryption during transit, but missed points because communications were not encrypted with a key the provider didn't have access to (i.e. the communications were not

end-to-end encrypted End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a system of communication where only the communicating users can read the messages. In principle, it prevents potential eavesdroppers – including telecom providers, Internet providers, malicious actors, and eve ...

), users couldn't verify contacts' identities, past messages were not secure if the encryption keys were stolen (i.e. the service did not provide

forward secrecy In cryptography, forward secrecy (FS), also known as perfect forward secrecy (PFS), is a feature of specific key agreement protocols that gives assurances that session keys will not be compromised even if long-term secrets used in the session key ...

), the code was not open to independent review (i.e. the source code was not

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

), the security design was not properly documented, and there had not been a recent independent security audit. The British intelligence agency

Government Communications Headquarters Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...

(GCHQ)'s secret

mass surveillance Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizati ...

program

Optic Nerve In neuroanatomy, the optic nerve, also known as the second cranial nerve, cranial nerve II, or simply CN II, is a paired cranial nerve that transmits visual information from the retina to the brain. In humans, the optic nerve is derived fro ...

and

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

(NSA) were reported to be indiscriminately collecting still images from Yahoo webcam streams from millions of mostly innocent Yahoo webcam users from 2008 to 2010, among other things creating a database for facial recognition for future use. Optic Nerve took a still image from the webcam stream every 5 minutes. In September 2016, ''The New York Times'' reported that Yahoo's security team, led by Alex Stamos, had pressed for Yahoo to adopt end-to-end encryption sometime between 2014 and 2015, but this had been resisted by Jeff Bonforte, Yahoo's senior vice president, "because it would have hurt Yahoo's ability to index and search message data".

References

External links

* {{URI scheme Discontinued software BlackBerry software IOS software Classic Mac OS instant messaging clients MacOS instant messaging clients Symbian instant messaging clients Windows instant messaging clients Freeware

Messenger ''MESSENGER'' was a NASA robotic space probe that orbited the planet Mercury between 2011 and 2015, studying Mercury's chemical composition, geology, and magnetic field. The name is a backronym for "Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochem ...

Yahoo! instant messaging clients VoIP software Videotelephony 1998 software Android (operating system) software Yahoo! community websites Internet properties established in 1998 Internet properties disestablished in 2018

Defunct instant messaging clients