Celebrate the 4th of July with Yahoo! Messenger
July 2, 2009 on 10:24 am | In 9.0 version, Avatars, Fun Stuff | 25 Comments
This Saturday, July 4th is Independence Day here in the U.S. While you’ll probably be out enjoying hot dogs on the grill, summer sunshine and fireworks, here’s a few ways you can get in the spirit with Yahoo! Messenger.
Stars & Stripes for your Avatar
Visit the Fourth of July section on Yahoo! Avatars and dress your Avatar in some patriotic gear. Choose from flag-themed clothing and backgrounds filled with fireworks.
Skin it red or blue
Change your Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 skin to ruby red, icy blue or sky blue. Click the gold dot near the very top of the 9.0 Messenger window.
Wave your flag
Don’t forget about the hidden emoticon for the US flag. Hover your mouse on the emoticon to see the text shortcut ==> 
Red, white & blue display images
Click on one of the images below to change your display image in Yahoo! Messenger 9.0. If you’re on a different version of Messenger, right click and save the image to your desktop. Then manually add it to your Yahoo! Messenger.
Happy Fourth of July to everyone!
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
Sarah thank you for your tips!
And thank you to all the Yahoo! Messenger team!
Red and blue is the way to go on Saturday!
And I wish happy 4th July to all the blog users.
Happy 4th July!
Independce day should be a day also to remember all of our troops abroad.
Serving for our country means they wont be with their friends and family.
Also to remember those who we lost in the fight for freedom.
Can I just point out though.
Unless it’s just my PC, you cannot hover over the stars and stripes to see the code.
Not that some of us don’t know the code already lol
Thanks again Sarah, enjoy the weekend.
Comment by American4You — July 2, 2009 #
happy 4th.
btw, i know theres the imvironment for cats, but why not a cat emote for the basic YIM… so that users who cant use IMV’s can see a kitty?
Comment by sailoryue — July 2, 2009 #
21325436tr
Comment by vampire — July 2, 2009 #
eow coment ko huh
Comment by angel — July 3, 2009 #
,,,hi guys coment ko plz
,,,ingat kau lagi huh
Comment by angel — July 3, 2009 #
Can we please get some new audibles? Why must we keep the election and valentines ones???
Comment by Kristie — July 3, 2009 #
I use Ubuntu Linux’ Jaunty on an big ole’ AMD64. Every once in a while Pidgin, which I use because it doesn’t HAVE all the superficial crap on it like Messenger, has problems from time to time.
Every once in a while I have to go get new versions of Pidgin because something here has changed to lock out non-Yahoo versions.
Know this: the next time I have to upgrade, I’m getting off of Yahoo entirely. I don’t have time for this crap, and your services are just one of a dozen or more.
So be kind: try to get along, ok?
Comment by Brian Fahrlander — July 3, 2009 #
Happy 4th of July Sarah. Thank you for the tips and enjoy your holiday! Best wishes, Henryk and family
Comment by Henryk — July 3, 2009 #
happy 4th of july to all the americans here..
dear sarah it is 8 months since the new style (and deeply despised) profiles came online without warning and still no indicator on a profile as to whether a person is online or not????
when is this basic feature going to be reinstated?
Comment by ceebee23 — July 3, 2009 #
i am still having problems with the display image appearing *black box* and it has been known to Yahoo team by many users for a long time and so far there has been no fix , how about focus more on fixing the problems with the messenger before paying attention to the extensions
Comment by Steven — July 4, 2009 #
How about you focus on streamlining the product, making it less bloated, and more usable?
You could offer 2 versions – the whistles and bells one, and a classic variant, without all the annoying crap such as IMvironments, audibles and such.
As a long term yahoo messenger user (’99), I’ve seen it all – I’ve ached through each change introduced.
And to this day, I still try and make my UI as simple as possible, not clotted with all the things nobody ever uses.
Focus on that, you people.
Comment by George C. — July 5, 2009 #
Still wondering why you didn’t repair your messenger yet. Still unable to chat with WLM-users. I can write them, but messages from them don’t get delivered since months.
When you have finished repairing your messenger, we celebrate 4th of July (2020) :/
Comment by Marco — July 5, 2009 #
Why won’t you even acknowledge the many bugs in YM 9? The photo share element is still non-functional for me and many, many other users–just google “yahoo messenger photo share problem” for all the message board postings all over the web. We are all frustrated!! The governments of China and Iran are more open and honest and than the technical management of Yahoo (that’s saying alot…)
Comment by J.W. Birdsfoot — July 6, 2009 #
Just to be clear, I’m not 100% satisfied with the currenty Yahoo! Messenger experience, but I don’t whine about it.
Comment by Fake Al Gore — July 6, 2009 #
Is the air thin up there on your pedestal?
Comment by mal_igned — July 6, 2009 #
What bothers me is Yahoo! had a GNU/Linux version of their client. Then they discontinued it. You can’t even find it now. I want a decent GNU/Linux port already. I understand people weren’t using the GNU/Linux version before- but if you don’t provide something decent don’t expect it to get utilized when there are better applications out like pidgin that do the same essential thing. Unfortunately some of us do want the other desirable features of Yahoo’s messenger. I haven’t been able to use Yahoo’s messenger client in years. It’s really sad. Release a decent GNU/Linux version already.
Comment by Jack — July 7, 2009 #
Fake Al Gore, whining is the only way now, because the Yahoo! Messenger team just ignore us. Sarah barely responds unless it’s just to point out a feature. Help emails are always answered incorrectly by Max, who is nothing more than somebody who looks for the nearest auto response.
Go to the profile blog and see what a difference it is there, where Melissa responds to people’s concerns, negative or not. It’s more civilised, has many users and you get a feeling they are going somewhere in terms of customer service.
Comment by CivilisedButCensored — July 7, 2009 #
I have used the yahoo for five years,I love it very much.bwo888.com
Comment by Yahoo--one of my love — July 7, 2009 #
@mal_igned: Yes, it is quite thin now that you mention it. Sorry, but I was having a terrible day, and I decided to take it out on the masses here. That was inappropriate of me, and I now wish a moderator would come by and delete that comment.
@Jack: I vaguely remember a UNIX client a long time ago, though I didn’t realize it was targetted directly at GNU/Linux. Yes, it was terrible. While I don’t use GNU/Linux on anything resembling a regular basis, I have quite a few friends that do. They all use AOL, though, so it’s a moot point for me.
@CivilisedButCensored: See my comment to mal_igned above. I’m not sure why, but my experiences (two so far, thankfully) with Yahoo! Messenger support have been fantastic. I get the auto-responder first followed by an article from the knowledgebase that does a poor job of answering my question. After that, though, I got through to a real person that helped me. In both cases, they were bugs with the program that were fixed in later builds, so I know they listen. Maybe things have gotten worse over the years.
Comment by Fake Al Gore — July 7, 2009 #
@Fake Al Gore
I’ve pulled down your previous comment (per your request)– thanks for the change of heart.
-Melissa
Comment by mdaniels — July 7, 2009 #
I reported the bug with Yahoo! Chat where you cannot post an emote by prefixing your post with “:”, this is what I got back from Max:
“Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Messenger.
I’m sorry you’ve been having trouble sending emoticons in Yahoo! Chat. I
can understand this must be frustrating.
Yahoo! Chat does support emoticons. For a complete list please visit the
following link:” and it goes on to tell me about smileys.
That was not the answer to my question.
When I reported about 5 bugs, including a security vulnerability, I got this response:
“While we don’t have administrative Yahoo! “chatters” on call, you can
take advantage of the following features we have available for you:” and it goes on to tell me about ignore feature.
I sent a request asking why chat data pulled the old profile data, and we couldn’t modify them, and the response was “We do not have enough information to understand your question”? I thought it was quite clear, I responded in clearer terms, nothing heard back til a few days later when I got a satisfaction survey.
Comment by CivilisedButCensored — July 8, 2009 #
@mdaniels – Thank you. I still see it, though. Is it normal for me to see my own comments that have been removed?
@CivilisedButCensored: It appears there have been some changes since the last time I used their support. Quick question, though: I’m used to IRC for chatting. Can you not use “/me” to emote? I’m surprised they ignored a potential security vulnerability!
Comment by Fake Al Gore — July 9, 2009 #
@Fake Al Gore
Could be cached on your machine– try clearing your cache for your browser (or check in another browser) to see if it still shows up.
-Melissa
Comment by Melissa Daniels — July 9, 2009 #
@Fake Al Gore
What you should be able to do in Yahoo! Chat is post something like
:is happy
and it posts as an emote. It’s been this way forever, but since the beta of version 9, it hasn’t worked. I have reported it in beta bug report from and final via customer suppoer, but when you get responses like that from Max, you really do believe the developers are not aware of it. And concerning is that the support team don’t understand basic functionality for what they are supporting.
Another bug new in beta 9 and since that I reported and got responses from Max, are not being able to use the up arrow to scroll through your chat posts if you need to repost one, his response was as before, not understanding the question!
Comment by CivilisedButCensored — July 9, 2009 #
this is grate
Comment by mari — July 14, 2009 #