Peek in on your friends at Yahoo.com
July 13, 2007 on 9:58 am | In Features, Web version | 28 Comments
Checked out Yahoo.com lately? We launched some improvements for the Yahoo! Messenger personal assistant (or PA as we call it here in Sunnyvale). The PA is a module on the Yahoo! homepage that gives you a glimpse into your Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger friends, local weather and more. To get the most from the PA, you need to be signed in to the Yahoo! network.
The Yahoo! Messenger PA shows your list of friends that are currently online, along with their status (including sorting by group). You can then just click on a friend to start an instant message. Shock and surprise – I have Yahoo.com as my homepage so when I fire up my browser in the morning, I hover on the PA to preview my new Mail messages and to check which of my Yahoo! Messenger friends are online.
And don’t worry – viewing your list of friends in the PA does not mean you appear online to them. You still need to sign into Yahoo! Messenger to be online and to send or receive messages. Checking your PA can be a handy way of seeing who’s at the party before you join in, so to speak.
Other new PA features include the ability to collapse your groups (click the “Collapse All” link), viewing of friends’ status messages (sorry, no hyperlinks), and a scrollable interface to easily view your whole friends list instead of clicking through page by page. There’s a bug with this version – an idle icon will appear next to a friend, but the busy icon is not yet showing up. We’ll get that fixed in the next couple of weeks.
To check out the Yahoo! Messenger PA, go to http://www.yahoo.com and hover your mouse on the “Messenger” tab on the right side. Be sure you’re signed in so you can see your friends list.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
lol, kelly.
Hey guys, at least the Yahoo! Messenger personal assistant is Mac compatible!
Comment by Lucky — July 13, 2007 #
Nope, I was wrong. It’s not. My bad
Tested in Camino, Safari and Firefox . . .interesting.
Comment by Lucky — July 13, 2007 #
Sarah, it shows me the online status of friends who have yet to agree to my add request, messenger doesn’t do this, it greys the smiley face out so you cannot tell, and says “add request pending”.
Comment by Tommy — July 13, 2007 #
Something along the lines of this would make a really great Vista sidebar gadget.
Comment by Bobby — July 13, 2007 #
Sarah, this feature is not reliable for me on my PC or Mac. When I scroll over the Yahoo Personal Assistant it will show me people who are online in Messenger, but then when I log onto Messenger, they are NOT showing as online. Do they assume they are invisible in all programs? Are they unaware that they are showing up as online in everyone’s Personal Assistant? Is this a bug?
Comment by Robin — July 13, 2007 #
greetings!!!!from seattle
Comment by alaskanarny — July 13, 2007 #
greetings from seattle,fri the 13th done!!
Comment by alaskanarny — July 13, 2007 #
just got rid of windows vista, giant resource killer after 6 months. good luck with your new ym for vista :>>
Comment by irene — July 13, 2007 #
Wellcome
Comment by abdulrahman — July 14, 2007 #
MSN contacts are not shown
Looks that yahoo uses different protocol for MSN, for example many third party clients for YM cannot show MSN contacts.
How come Yahoo’s own-made PA cannot show them too?
Comment by yuku — July 14, 2007 #
Grettings!!! From S.C.
Comment by Ashley — July 14, 2007 #
hey can anyone tell me what this site is about.
Comment by Ashley — July 14, 2007 #
I know this is off topic, but is there a good now playing plugin for Winamp with Yahoo! Messenger that shows the headphones icon and all the other goodies.
Comment by Muzammil — July 15, 2007 #
Every time i hover the mouse on messenger, it shows a message “it’s not fun to be a party of one” Invite Friends, or the page to sign up for messenger 8.1 keeps popping up which I have already downloaded moe than once. How can I stop this and see my contacts?
Comment by nancy — July 15, 2007 #
Hi nancy,
It sounds like you’re signing in on the Yahoo! network with an ID that’s different from the one you use for Messenger. In other words, on one ID/account you have Messenger friends, but on the other you do not. So when you sign in on the Yahoo.com front page, the ID you’re using doesn’t have Messenger contacts, which prompts the
“it’s not fun to be a party of one” message. Does that sound like what’s happening?
Sarah Bacon
Comment by Administrator — July 16, 2007 #
FYI, Yahoo didn’t merge with Hotmail. That is a misconception.
Yahoo! Messenger has interoperability with Windows Live Messenger, meaning that WLM friends can talk to Y!M friends and vice versa without needing both applications to do it.
Comment by Venom — July 16, 2007 #
Yeah, that’s a beauty, but what use of it if it’s not working in Safari nor Firefox on my Mac? When I receive new mail in my Yahoo! inbox the icon doesn’t change so I can never tell whether I have new messages or not. I believe Yahoo! needs to warm their chairs and prepare for some hard work.
Comment by Danijel — July 17, 2007 #
if i sign in as ivisible to my friends, do they see me even if i am invisible?
does anyone well see me?
Comment by carmen_perez359 — July 19, 2007 #
Hi carmen,
If you sign in as invisible, you appear offline to everyone. However, you will still be on your friends’ lists, and if they want they can still send you messages. So even if you’re invisible, you are still able to receive messages. If you then respond, you will still appear invisible in their contact list but they will know you’re online
Sarah Bacon
Comment by Administrator — July 19, 2007 #
ILOVE MY INDIA
Comment by subair — July 19, 2007 #
Hi Sarah, Thanks for your reply. Actually, I have 2 Yahoo IDs and the same 2 friends on both. I have tried switching messenger ID when signing into Yahoo! but the same message pops up. Once in a great while, it will show the 2 names, but maybe only a couple times a week then goes back to the message “it’s not fun to be a party of one.” When I sign into messenger and open the sidebar, the 2 names appear. I really liked the PA feature when it was working and would like to restore it. Thank you.
Comment by nancy — July 19, 2007 #
hi,im new in here.nice to be apart of yahoo members
Comment by fiasco petrach — July 20, 2007 #
I am still getingt the same message about “the party of one” and under the message there is Invite Friends link, which I did, thinking maybe it would clear the message. It hasn’t. I haven’t been able to see my contacts on the PA for over a week. The Yahoo! Messenger page to install for the web and 8.1 also keeps coming on though I have it installed. I have reinstalled it several times thinking it might work.
Comment by nancy — July 21, 2007 #
Sarah, Now I feel like a real jerk! I think I have figured our why I don’t see them…maybe they aren’t signed on, so they won’t show up? Right? ( I only have 2 contacts.) If they are online but “invisible” would they still show a yellow smiley on the PA? Thanks so much….you made me think!
Comment by nancy — July 22, 2007 #
Hi nancy,
Yes, that’s correct – the front page PA only shows online friends that are signed in; invisible or offline friends don’t appear. Sorry I didn’t think to clarify that earlier. Glad you got it figured out!
Sarah Bacon
Comment by Administrator — July 23, 2007 #
how can i add PA to my messenger or to my webpage i.e., YAHOO
Comment by Rakesh — May 8, 2008 #
hi my icon (picture)that i have on my IM only shows me when im online i want it to show me even when im offline
Comment by zaineb — September 12, 2009 #
@zaineb – At this time, display images only show when you’re online. There is no way to set them to show up when you’re offline. Thanks,
Sarah Bacon
Comment by Administrator — September 14, 2009 #