Yahoo! Livetext was an audio-free video

messaging app A message is a unit of communication that conveys information from a sender to a receiver. It can be transmitted through various forms, such as spoken or written words, signals, or electronic data, and can range from simple instructions to co ...

built by

Yahoo Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, an ...

for the

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

and Android. Launched in July 2015, Livetext represented Yahoo's attempt to compete in mobile messaging with apps like

Snapchat Snapchat is an American multimedia social media and instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of the app are that pictures and messages, known as "snaps", are usually availa ...

Facebook Messenger Messenger, formerly known as Facebook Messenger, is an American proprietary instant messaging service developed by Meta Platforms. Originally developed as Facebook Chat in 2008, the client application of Messenger is currently available o ...

and

WhatsApp WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger) is an American social media, instant messaging (IM), and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make vo ...

. Livetext never gained significant traction and shut down eight months later in March 2016.

History

Livetext was part of CEO

Marissa Mayer Marissa Ann Mayer (; born May 30, 1975) is an American business executive and investor who served as President (corporate title), president and chief executive officer of Yahoo! from 2012 to 2017, when it was sold to Verizon. She was a long-tim ...

's effort to revamp Yahoo's aging services and make the shift to mobile. Livetext complimented its popular desktop-centric communication products

Yahoo! Mail ! Mail (also written as Yahoo Mail) is an email service offered 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 Yah ...

and

Yahoo! Messenger Yahoo! Messenger (sometimes abbreviated Y!M) was an instant messaging client and associated protocol created and formerly operated by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Messenger was provided free of charge and could be downloaded and used with a generic "Yahoo I ...

. In October 2014, Yahoo acquired

MessageMe MessageMe was a messaging app and platform for the iPhone and Android. It launched in March 2013 and grew to 5 million users within 3 months. The app allowed users to send and receive videos, photos, stickers, and voice messages in addition to te ...

, a messaging app with several million users. The MessageMe acquisition happened as part of a broader strategy on the part of Mayer to bring talent to Yahoo via small startup acquisitions. The MessageMe team led development on Livetext and built Livetext on top of MessageMe technology. In July 2015, Livetext debuted in the top 150 apps in the

App Store An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not i ...

. Two weeks later, it had dropped out of the top 1,000 apps. In February 2016, ex-MessageMe co-founder and CEO Arjun Sethi left Yahoo to join

Social Capital Social capital is a concept used in sociology and economics to define networks of relationships which are productive towards advancing the goals of individuals and groups. It involves the effective functioning of social groups through interper ...

as an investing partner. By the time of Sethi's departure, over one third of startup founders—26 out of 70 that came from 53 acquisitions—who had joined Yahoo via acquisition had left Yahoo. Later in February, Yahoo began layoffs that amounted to about 15 percent of employee headcount. In March 2016, Yahoo announced that it would shut down Livetext as part of a broader effort to simplify its product line that included cutting

Yahoo! Games Yahoo! Games was a section of the Yahoo! website, launched on March 31, 1998, in which Yahoo! users could play games either with other users or by themselves. The majority of Yahoo! Games was closed down on March 31, 2014, and the balance was cl ...

, Yahoo Astrology, and

Yahoo! Search BOSS Yahoo Search BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) was a Yahoo! Developer Network initiative to provide an open search web services platform. Yahoo discontinued BOSS JSON Search API, BOSS Placefinder API, BOSS Placespotter API and as well BOSS H ...

. It stated that it would incorporate Livetext product features into Yahoo Messenger as its core messaging service. In July 2018, Yahoo shut down Yahoo Messenger.

Features

The core feature of Livetext was silent video text messaging. Participants could

text message Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile phones, tablet computers, smartwatches, desktop computer, des ...

and see each other via live streaming video but the audio would remain silent and could not be turned on. The lack of audio meant that Livetext could be used anywhere that traditional text messaging could be used like at work or on public transportation. Like

, chat sessions were

ephemeral Ephemerality (from the Greek word , meaning 'lasting only one day') is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly. Academically, the term ephemeral constitutionally describes a diverse assortment of things and experiences, fr ...

which meant the app kept no record of the video stream or text messages. Due to the novelty of Livetext's core feature, commentators and reviewers described the app as "weird", "awkward" and "strange".

References

{{Yahoo! Inc. Yahoo! instant messaging clients Defunct instant messaging clients Discontinued software IOS software Livetext Android (operating system) software Livetext