Fun with groups
June 29, 2009 on 1:24 pm | In 9.0 version | 11 Comments
Some things are just more fun with a group of friends. And using Yahoo! Messenger is one of them. While not new to Yahoo! Messenger, I thought I’d take a moment to highlight the group features that are available in Yahoo! Messenger 9.0.
If you’re like me, you have a variety of people in your contact list – some are from work, some are friends, others are family. As a result, I have several groups in my contact list. While the groups make it easier for me to find someone in my list, it also enables me to use some handy features for quickly communicating with each group.
When you right-click on a group name in your contact list, you’ll see a few options. The first is “Broadcast an IM”. When you select this feature, a new IM window pops up and provides a place for you to type your message. When you click Send, that IM gets sent to everyone in that group. No need to open multiple windows to contact each one of them, we’ll do it for you. When someone responds, it will come back to you as a new IM conversation between you and that friend.
The menu also offers “Start a conference”. This is one of the more fun features in Yahoo! Messenger and it enables you to start a private chat room with your friends. Your friends will receive an invite, asking them to join you in a conference. Conferences are a great way to plan group events, discuss current events, or just kill time.
Even if you haven’t created groups in your contact list, you can still easily start a conference with a group of friends without having to IM each one separately. Just select multiple contacts from your list using the keyboard/mouse combo SHIFT + click or CTRL + click. Then right-click on one of the selected contacts, go to “More Actions” and select “Start a conference”.
And if there are certain groups you’d prefer not to be available to (like your work friends when you’re signed on over the weekend at home), you can also change stealth settings by group. Just right click on a group name in your list and select “Stealth Settings”. Then choose “Appear permanently offline to selected contacts”.
We use the word permanent in that description because your stealth setting for that group will persist if you sign out and sign back in again. To go back to appearing online to that group of contacts, right-click again and choose Stealth Settings > “Appear online to selected contacts”.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
Can you make a .jad version of Yahoo! Messenger?
Comment by Jademan — June 29, 2009 #
The future you’re describing has been abused too much. You can’t imagine how many people I had to ignore because they were using it too much to a point where I would get messages such as “good night all”.
Comment by Luckyy — June 30, 2009 #
feature*
In a post, long ago, on this blog, I described ways to make this future better. I don’t think anyone cared..
Comment by Luckyy — June 30, 2009 #
مساء الخير والاحساس والطيبة
Comment by الخال6 — June 30, 2009 #
I agree, this is a highly abused feature, I get tired of getting mass-sent IMs.
Comment by Cliff — July 1, 2009 #
YM client for Windows Mobile:
When should i expect this to be released?
Comment by jokiz — July 1, 2009 #
this version sucks
im waiting for the new one
when r u gonna publish the new v.
Comment by armstrong — July 1, 2009 #
السلام
Comment by khaled — July 5, 2009 #
hi how are you
Comment by noda — July 6, 2009 #
I would like to have an option “Appear PERMANENTLY ONLINE to someone” in Stealth Settings. I am forced to stay permanently invisible all the time because I use messenger mainly at work, but I would like my girlfriend to see me online, without having to set her manually as online each time I start the messenger or each time I set myself Invisible. This way when I set myself to “invisible” she would still see me online. (It would be a SIMILAR feature to the PERMANENTLY OFFLINE setting which already exists in Stealth Settings)
Comment by Iulian-Florin Toma — July 17, 2009 #
@Iulian-Florin,
Thanks for the suggestion. As you’ve discovered, there’s no way to do that at this time.
Sarah Bacon
Comment by Administrator — July 17, 2009 #