What’s your status?
April 13, 2007 on 6:01 pm | In Features | 63 Comments
In the mornings I’m “Waking Up”, around noon I’m into “Food”, and later in the day you might see me “Seeking Caffeine”. I love to use my Yahoo! Messenger status to let friends know what I’m up to. But did you know that your status message can also be a great way to share things you’re into like websites and music?
I’m an avid Yahoo! Music LAUNCHcast radio listener (via the Messenger LAUNCHcast plug-in). I’m proud to say that I’ve reached fanatic level as a result of rating songs on My Station (1,400 & counting!!). I figure this kind of music devotion deserves sharing so when I tune in to LAUNCHcast radio, I change my Messenger status to display the artist and song I’m listening to. By doing that, my friends see what I’m listening to and if they’re interested, they can click to tune in (if they don’t like my music, they can ridicule me). When other friends do the same, I find it’s a great way to discover new music and tune into their LAUNCHcast stations. Here’s what a LAUNCHcast status looks like:
I also use my status message to share websites that I think are interesting, funny or just plain weird. You can drop a web address right into your status and it will display as a clickable link to your friends. Or if you prefer to give more context to your link, you can include a phrase to describe it. Let’s say I want share the link to my favorite recipe source, Yahoo! Food. In the new status message window I enter “Hungry? http://food.yahoo.com/recipes/”. On my friends’ lists, I show up like this:
To change your status, click on the menu next to your name at the top of the Messenger window. Then choose “New Status Message…”. If you change your status a lot and use links, it helps to get a preview of what your status looks like to your friends. The easiest way to do this is to add yourself to your own contact list. Then when you change your status, you can see what it looks like to the rest of your friends.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
yea, i knew it!
Anybody know when the new Yahoo! Messenger for WIndows Vista will be available?
Comment by Hessan — April 13, 2007 #
Google GTalk displays music status from outside programs, such as iTunes. That is more useful to me. Also, FIX chat rooms plz.
Comment by David — April 14, 2007 #
i just wonderin’ why i set ma self offline then when i started to use my cam my status will become ” view my webcam” and evrybody ask my permission if they can view me.
Comment by stephanie — April 14, 2007 #
There’s a program called HyperIM that will give you the LAUNCHcast status with media players like Winamp, iTunes, and Windows Media Player.
http://numedecod.ro/HyperIM/
Comment by Venom — April 14, 2007 #
Comment by Available — April 14, 2007 #
Yahoo!multy messenger[for Windows vista]will be comming soon. =D>
Comment by Mouse pointer — April 14, 2007 #
I was so lookin forwards to sharing with my friends and family and finally geting the chance to play with my toys from Rodgers wireless ……..but nothing works in Kirkfield ON. ?
For some weirdness – I seem to be in a void of time and space where we have. “O” reception, and I must spend my time squinting into this cute but tiny blackberry 7290 or driving to the local public library to get on-line with my part of the world …. 60 minutes at a time!!! WOW WEE MAN !!
That’s all folks …. Bye for now, love bigron.
Comment by bigron55 — April 14, 2007 #
Can’t you already have multi-messenger in Vista by using the registry Test trick?
Comment by Venom — April 14, 2007 #
[...] After repeatedly being posted on Romanian and foreign blogs Darius decided to post the link and a shot review on the Yahoo! Messenger blog. The next day ha was very surprised at seeing that his post had been paid attention by Sarah Bacon, Product Manager at Yahoo! Messenger. “Hello Darius, it’s extraordinary. Very clever.” His girlfriend’s ID was added by 85 people to their personal Yahoo! Messenger list. Some of those who sent her messages did it just for fun but others had serious intentions. One of them Jeff Bonforte, who is in charge with Yahoo! Messenger with voice, contacted Darius’ girlfriend on Messenger. Darius got his personal e-mail address and personally wrote to him. When asked how he could prove his identity and support his claim of working for Yahoo! Bonforte told Darius to search his name on the internet. The young student found that Bonforte was indeed an employee of the well known web site. [...]
Pingback by Tips To Read » Emoticons made Yahoo! to Negotiate with a Romanian Student — April 14, 2007 #
is it really so hard to get a beta out for the new yahoo messenger for vista? it doesn’t matter if you can only chat with one person and no other features.
just do as Google does: 100 betas from the very beginning to the end. you WILL get GOOD feedback instead of finishing a product and seeing that many people don’t like it!
Comment by irene — April 14, 2007 #
I want to know why Yahoo Removed the old status messages from Yahoo Messenger 6 ,7,8 . They existed in Yahoo Messenger 5.0 and 5.5 but since the new 6.0 was released and versions above the old status messages have gone.
Comment by vb_packets — April 15, 2007 #
Who cares what your status is when no one can see it, or what station you are listening to or streaming when there are other products out there that really work. The better question is, as a shareholder and business owner, why should I continue to support yahoo when it can’t even support it’s current user base. Upgrade to 8.1 what for? You can’t even make the chat room experiece enjoyable. Perhaps Sarah, as a product manager, you should be listening to your clients and fix the problems, then develop and test the new before you release it. Yahoo acts like they didn’t know about Vista, Microsoft has only been talking about it for at least 2 years. Fix messenger, fix the chat rooms, get the vista patch out, then maybe some of us will consider staying with the horse that always seems to be finishing 3 or 4th these days
Comment by Kate — April 15, 2007 #
Anybody know when the new Yahoo! Messenger for WIndows Vista will be available?
like how march longer am i going to have to wait for it to come out?
and are we talking about a new version of Yahoo! Messenger like version 8.5 or 9.0?
Comment by david — April 15, 2007 #
Hey Stephanie,
In order to stop displaying your webcam status as VIEW MY WEBCAM…do the following:
1) Login to Yahoo! messenger
2) Click on MESSENGER at the top
3) Click on PREFERENCES
4) Click on WEBCAM
And click off WHEN I SHOW MY WEBCAM, CHANGE MY STATUS MESSAGE TO
And voila! There are many webcam options and you can chose the ones that you want.
Also, in Preferences there are many other things. You can try and check them out.
I hope this will help you.
Okay, I gotta go off to sleep soon. Take care all.
Comment by user — April 15, 2007 #
i would not bother asking for the vista version of yahoo 8.1 works on vista so yahoo do not care its funny yahoo act like they did not know vista was coming its been in production over 2 years by the time the vista version is out windows vienna (btw the next windows yahoo) will be out lmao it is amusing how sarah only responds to things she can deal with and avoids the spam issue she says shes an avid yahoo messenger user you obviusly can not use chat then and if you do …. you will shurley see the issues yahoo users face the chat rooms are a farce 14 yeard old kids with downloaded software can take over a room and the users ability to have voice how on earth did it come to this no wonder she listens to all those stations she is not going into chat lol they pay you to listen to music all day on yahoo? that explains a few things if the manager can yahoo all day and write pointless blogs about bags of foam,launchcast and anything else they can think up OTHER than a real issue then what the hell are the other staff doing makes you wonder…
Comment by Karl — April 16, 2007 #
I don’t even bother with Yahoo Messenger anymore. I use Miranda IM now. It boasts a low memory footprint; the UI is skinnable/customizable to no end, there’s even a Vista side-bar gadget in development; the developers are constantly churning out new builds; it has a massive array of plugins to make the messenger do just about anything you want.
I have my Yahoo, AIM, and MSN contacts all on the same list represented textual as well as with a photo avatar. It also displays the current weather, plus it checks my different POP mail accounts at user-defined intervals. All while only using less than 12MB of memory.
The only thing it cannot do that YIM can is voice, transferring of files (still broken), and Yahoo chat rooms, but those features are negligible to me.
Comment by The Pick of Destiny — April 16, 2007 #
Forgot to mention you can easily move the program folder to a USB flash drive as it is “portable.”
Comment by The Pick of Destiny — April 16, 2007 #
After using Yahoo Messenger (the only IM I have used till now) since it was launched, I uninstalled it recently. Why?
Because I don’t want the anyone to know what I am music I am listening to
.
I subscribe to Yahoo Music and the defaults in Yahoo Music are to change my YIM status to what I am listening to.
I have more than just my friends on my IM contact list. Professional contacts etc who I don’t want to reveal my music choice to.
Unfortunately, for some harebrained reason, all Yahoo tools turn on this setting by default.
I don’t want have to upgrade and have to remember to disable it everytime.
I am invisible most of the time and would like to retain my privacy!
So it is goodbye YIM. Meebo, here I come.
Comment by Chetan — April 16, 2007 #
Hi Chetan,
To turn off the LAUNCHcast music appearing as your status, just go to the Messenger menu > Preferences > Yahoo! Music and select “Do not change my status” under the “When I am listening to Yahoo! Music…” section.
Sarah Bacon
Comment by Administrator — April 16, 2007 #
My Status Is…”I can’t join a room” and my Yahoo! Social Life is a thing of the past. How can anyone meet new friends when you can’t get to see who might be a new friend. I can’t just pick a name out of a hat and send them an instant message to be my buddy. What is your Yahoo! Name Sarah, maybe I can add you as a buddy and we can be friends…
Comment by polar — April 16, 2007 #
Hi Sarah,
Thx for the reply.
I know I can turn it off. But the problem is it is turned on by default. I had YIM running on my home, work and laptop.
Every time YIM is updated or Yahoo Music Jukebox is updated, I have to remember to turn off this default and do this on every computer. Too much to remember.
Shouldn’t this be disabled by default. If the user wants, they can turn it on explicitly. Or even if it is a popup during install/upgrade, one could live with that.
Comment by Chetan — April 16, 2007 #
I mistakenly entered only initials (I was trying to retain some privacy when I did it). these intials show on my IM on EACH comment. I changed it back to show my name, but the IM still shows that STUPID initials.
CC S That’s so DUMB…so LAME. I’ve looked everywhere and cannot find out how to get rid of that. I went to > Options, then to > Mail Preferences…nothing I did there changed anything.
I have UNinstalled the whole messenger two times…and I’m going to do it a 3rd time if I can’t get rid of that in a messager
Comment by Cher Stewart — April 16, 2007 #
dude ymlite and ytk pro now have this room bumping feature that allows me and my friends to get into rooms in under 10 seconds!
Comment by Pebbles — April 17, 2007 #
Sarah & Dev Team,
I have been asked a few times about displaying your status message on a website.
Sort of like you can do w/ the online presence (display graphical smiley showing online / offline)
Is this something we can maybe see? I know that Yahoo! is releasing tons of new things, I think it would be cool to incorporate this into say your 360 profile or your regular profile.
Comment by UnSaKreD — April 18, 2007 #
to venom:
i CAN have that with lotta problems. but what i’m waiting for is not that feature. it’s the whole look-and-feel of Vista in the new Yahoo! Messenger
Comment by Hessan — April 21, 2007 #
Hessan, what makes you think you wouldn’t have problems with the Vista version of Yahoo! Messenger? I believe it’s going to be a beta, and you know what that means…
Potential crashes!
I love that phrase. :”>
Comment by Venom — April 21, 2007 #
[...] A bit of experimentation revealed that, if you include multiple URLs, the first URL wins and any subesquent URLs are preserved in the text (which could be useful if you wanted to explicitly write out a URL in your status). And, yup, you can include the URL anywhere in the status, not just the start or end. Check out a few more status tricks over at the Messenger blog, and don’t forget to ask them about your chat rooms. [...]
Pingback by Yahoo! Cool thing of the Day » Blog Archive » Status: Having a blast — April 23, 2007 #
Nope, don’t know what beta is! =(
Comment by Layna — April 28, 2007 #
Just one question….once you dont want a status on your messenger….is there anyway to remove it? So they dont build up.
Comment by Virgo_361968 — April 28, 2007 #
Hi Virgo_361968,
Unfortunately that’s not a feature yet. As you add more status’s now, the older ones fall off. But it’s a great suggestion for a feature, thanks.
And to UnSaKreD – sorry for not responding earlier. As you mentioned in your post, you can indicate whether you’re online or not by adding presence to your website/blog etc. (see http://messenger.yahoo.com/addpresence.php) but it won’t reflect your actual status message, just whether or not your online. But that’s another great suggestion that I too hope we’ll see in the future. Thanks,
Sarah Bacon
Comment by Administrator — April 28, 2007 #
I don’t like listening to the Yahoo launchcast, I prefer my itunes player, music match or even windows media player. I wish yahoo would work with those.
Comment by Mena B — May 2, 2007 #
hi! i love it that i can choose how to appear to my friends because of the “disturbance factor” of always being online, but i have another “privacy” issue… i’m on yahoo360 and everytime i update my page, a “gleam” icon appears beside my name on the messenger contacts list of my friends so that with one click, they’re into and onto my page. is there any way i can turn of this “gleam” so my contacts aren’t automatically alerted about new entries in my 360 page? thanks a lot and more power to you! keep up the excellent work!
Comment by tips sj — May 3, 2007 #
What I am going yo do to change my status to “Idle” even if i’m using Yahoo!Messenger???i’ve been looking all day for all of this!!!(because my friend knows that and she is not telling me how to do it!!!)
Comment by ken — May 8, 2007 #
what you need is a “fake” idle program, there are many available two worth checking out for differences in the “fake” status alone would be:
Magic Status
http://www.wackyb.co.nz/option,com_remository/Itemid,3894/func,fileinfo/id,18/
which allows you to select “fake”;
* Plugin (puzzle piece)
* Open Talk (phone)
* Song (headphones)
* Webcam (for ‘real’ fake webcam get StickerCam )
* Idle
but those who know the difference btween real and fake wont be fooled
then there is
Real “fake” idle
http://www.wackyb.co.nz/option,com_remository/func,fileinfo/id,21/
this one is as “real” as it gets and will hide your true active status
Comment by bee — May 8, 2007 #
i really hate ym8, when i sign in my contact list doesn’t appear. but when i sign in meebo.com all my contact list appear
Comment by alid — June 4, 2007 #
wow i didnt know this exisited!!
Comment by kyla — June 9, 2007 #
Hello Sarah/anyone who can help here,
I would like to change my status message to the currently played song in my music player i.e.Winamp or may be ITunes.
I know that this feature doesnot exist as of now, but is there any way to achieve it?
Thanks in advance.
Comment by Max — October 11, 2007 #
Hi Max –
There is an iTunes plug-in for Yahoo! Messenger 8.1. The plug-in allows you to control your itunes player from Messenger and you can display the song playing in itunes in your status. Go here for more info and to install it:
http://blog.messenger.yahoo.com/blog/2007/06/07/itunes-remote-plug-in/
Sarah Bacon
Comment by Administrator — October 11, 2007 #
Sarah,
Any chance of getting a Winamp currently playing on the next update, it is clear that loads of people want it!
Comment by Paul — October 31, 2007 #
Ok, the new YM 9 came out…fine, I installed it and it does me a lot of trouble with the status. The classic HyperYM does not work anymore. I want to get my good old long and Winamp plug-ined statuses back. How can I?
Comment by DarkSorceress — November 3, 2007 #
Hi all,
Some URL’s in “new status” are not shown. I’ve been trying to set my flickr URL as new staus. It worked last week but not anymore… Any suggestions on this? Thank you!
Comment by Cristian — November 11, 2007 #
hey!
I used to have my flickr link as my messenger status. I cant do that anymore, every other link or website seems to work except flickr.
Please help me out!
Thanks!!!
Comment by Tommy — November 16, 2007 #
Quick question here, hopefully someone can help me out. I had yahoo messenger installed and everything was going great. However, after a nasty IM episode with a friend I decided to uninstall the software so that this friend could not contact me that way (yeah, I know mature…but when you’re mad you aren’t thinking clearly). Anyways, question is – if this friend has not deleted me from their contact list (and I am pretty sure they have not) how do I appear to them? Do they recieve notification that I have uninstalled yahoo IM? If someone could help me out here I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks!
Comment by Raquel Beebe — November 19, 2007 #
Well Hello There!
2. The status tool is quite annoying. I can’t put any clickable link anymore. If not a sollution is provided I request at least a reason for this situation…
Y!IM’s status feature is quite disappointing nowadays. It is so because of the poor decisions taken by managers… most of the fun and the reason for which I choosed Y!IM wore the fun little games you could play with it’s statuses and “hidden” options regarding this statuses. It seems the company goes trough a lot of trouble to disable those features…
1. One of the most relevant problems is the (classical Yahoo! problem) one of un-optimized programs. Y!IM takes up about 60mb RAM or more; ok let’s say that I can understand the Messenger’s take on memory, but the E-Mail service from Yahoo! is ridiculous – in the case I have more tabs running (in whatever web browser of my choice) it is absolutelly impossible for me to switch to another tab if I happen to be on the (new)Yahoo!Mail, that’s how much processor and RAM it’s sucking. Needless to say I have quite a low-end computer but that is no excuse for such high numbers in such (what should be) basic simple programs. From my point of view it would be common sense to disable some of the ads (they simply “ugllyfy” the whole page and make it very stressfull) in favor of performance.
[[ Please excuse any grammar or spelling errors - not in an english speaking country ]]
Andrew Sebastian Matthews
Comment by Andrew Sebastian Matthews — January 3, 2008 #
Hi Andrew,
I don’t know what version you’re on but you can still put links into your Yahoo! Messenger status message. Just follow the format as outlined in the article (text followed by link in the status message box).
Sarah Bacon
Comment by Administrator — January 3, 2008 #
Well Hello Again!
I must appologize for the tone impression this post will give.
While I “understand” why you are inclined by your job to give such answers I’m still on the border of getting malicious… I would appreciate it if I’m not adressed as you would a 3 year old or grandma that just got a computer.
) “update your drivers”… This is the kind of answer given to someone who hasn’t a clue about computers in general or the common sense to get a clue for that matter.
Avoid sending infantile answers of the kind: “check your version”, “are you sure you’re doing it right?”(that may work for the mass retards that think that if they manage to open a file they’re programmers but not for me) or the classic (this does not belong here, but just to make a point
The issue with the clickable link status is not connected with the messenger version (I have 9Beta installed, and it didn’t work on 8.1 either) – if a relevant aspect of my computer configuration would have arisen you can rest assured I would have notified you.
It’s a preetty remote problem since not many others seem to have it, so I doubt anyone will bother with it – that’s why i requested at least the possible reason for it so I may fix it somehow myself (by reason of course it means a serios answer regarding the web-programming issue).
If you want more details here they are:
-> of course, any other kind of status works;
-> now if I type “www.” all is good, the status does change, but…;
-> but if I type more than “www.” or “http://something.something.something” the status simplly does nOt change, on my status changing panel it shows what I wrote but it just fails to put it next to me on the list – no one can see my clickable link.
Thank You!, Andrew Sebastian Matthews
Comment by Andrew Sebastian Matthews — January 4, 2008 #
WEBCAM STATUS PROBLEM WITH YOUR SERVER? I have noticed in the last week or so that when my wencam is on, and MY status message shows “View My Webcam”, the status message for me on my buddies computers simply shows as “Available” (i.e., they can’t see my webcam is available). If i send a specific invitation to an individual via an IM everything works fine, so it’s not a camrea problem. Is there a server problem that is crapping up status messages???
Comment by Dan Presser — January 15, 2008 #
Is this blog retireed??
Seems there are no responses to messages – most of the activity was back in ‘07 ….
I still have no luck with Yahoo’s server proberly broadcasting my status to others when my webcam is on. Have tried a different computer, deleted & reloaded YIM, tried Beta 9.0, defragged my HD – all to no avail. The webcam works – but the status message does not. This all started about 1/13/08.
Anyone know why this is happening; why Yahoo tech support does not respond; what the future looks like? Is it true MSN is more stable and useful?
Comment by Dan Presser — January 28, 2008 #
Atleast when the message is not sent for the following reasons please let the yahoo user know’HeyDude..You have a problem with your status’..Send an email ..Atleast Yahoo can do that if its music being listened by their own product Yahoo music…. especially when listening music happens this happens all the time..
Somewhere in December 2006 Yahoo! did some changes to their servers. It seems that status messages which contain specific URL addresses inside them are not being sent to your list contacts at all. There are also reports that some other status text patterns are being rejected as well. This is a issue with Yahoo!’s messenger servers.
Status was changed very often in a short period of time
Yahoo! Messenger will block any further status messages from your account, if too many status changes occured during a given time. This is to avoid flooding attempts towards your contact list accounts. You’ll need to wait some time (1 hour, less or more) before your statuses will be working again. You should not try to refresh your status during this time, as it will only increase the period. There are reports that completely uninstalling Yahoo! Messenger, also wiping the registry entries, and reinstalling it, might do the trick also. You may want to use a status that changes less frequently. There are many ways to do this.
Status is still not being received
The only possible reasons the status is not being sent, even if it appears in the status area, are:
You have a very slow internet connection, or the connection to Yahoo servers is lost
You are using some other 3rd party software, such as a firewall, or Yahoo! Messenger tunnel (Y!Tunnel, YTK Pro…) which may filter/block the data sent/received between YM and the internet.
Comment by Mohan Anandaram — February 4, 2008 #
Cool…
Comment by Aris — February 8, 2008 #
i have the exact problem andrew described!
cannot for the love of god display a simple link to my photo-sharing site to let my friends see our new baby!
it is incredibly frustrating, i have changed 3 YM versions and still no luck.
if there are websites blocked in YM status messages, why isn’t there a warning, or a faq with a list?
andrew, please let me know if you have a solution!
Comment by diana pop — February 19, 2008 #
same problem with status can’t change it a few months ago it worked just fine now i’m begining to see that only specific users can’t do this. IT IS EXTREMELY FUSTRATING and pretty shameful for such a company as yahoo not to see this problem and fix it.
Comment by pht — February 22, 2008 #
helow. if you could just help me with the status thingy.. i just want to put a hyperlink to this site http://www.crunchyroll.com/series-1578/Jenny-Juno-Movie.html
and i’d like to put like sweeet and other words like that but it won’t work. how could i do that?!! help
if you could reply directly to my mail .
thanks!!!
Comment by Karen — March 5, 2008 #
people frustrated that yahoo is filtering certain url statuses can use the free redirect service http://tinyurl.com/
Comment by Yahoohoo — March 5, 2008 #
what do i do when the link (url) that i typed in my status message doesn’t show?
Comment by tatum — March 17, 2008 #
same prob…i change my status to “view my webcam” and to all of my contacts it shows as simply “available” – this stopped working recently – it’s pretty frustrating
Comment by mari — March 25, 2008 #
thanks!
Comment by Sush — May 23, 2008 #
if you had the music set up to itunes more would use it…
Comment by Alyssa — August 29, 2009 #
how to update some text from mysite to status yahoo ?
http://vn.myblog.yahoo.com/lesinhtien
Comment by free style — November 18, 2009 #
@ free style – See this tutorial for instructions on how to update your status message and include a link in Yahoo! Messenger 10:
http://help.yahoo.com/tutorials/ms10/im_status1.html
Sarah Bacon
Comment by Administrator — November 18, 2009 #
I would love to know how I can delete all my status messges? I am tried of all of them being there and not being able to delete them
Comment by cindy oakes — April 15, 2010 #
You can set fake idle too… Read here http://www.snakebytez.com/2009/01/01/set-fake-idle-status-on-yahoo-messenger/
Comment by Vikram — October 2, 2010 #
I always use skype instead of yahoo they have loads of emoticons
Comment by skype emoticons — April 9, 2011 #