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Connect with your website visitors on Yahoo! Messenger Pingbox

March 16, 2010 on 12:28 pm | In 10 version, Features, Mac version, Pingbox | 86 Comments

One of our lesser known but very useful products is the Yahoo! Messenger Pingbox. With a copy and paste of some code, you can embed a chat window into your website, blog or social networking page. Then when visitors come to your page, they can see when you’re online and initiate a private IM conversation with you.

My friend Jim has a Pingbox on his neighborhood blog. While he’s on Yahoo! Messenger all day, his status says “Available” in his Pingbox. When visitors come to his site, he can see the counter change next to the Pingbox in his contact list. If someone wants to chat with him, they simply start typing in the Pingbox on the website, which in turn opens up a new IM conversation for Jim. His visitors can remain anonymous or give themselves a nickname while they chat.

One of the greatest things about Pingbox is that there is no need for anyone to know your Yahoo! ID or for you to know theirs. In fact visitors to your site don’t even need a Yahoo! ID to start chatting with you. You can also turn your Pingbox on or off right from your Yahoo! Messenger 10 contact list, so if you find you’re being interrupted too often by chatty visitors, you can go dark for awhile.

Jim says one of the things he really likes is that when he hovers on the Pingbox visitors in his contact list, it will show him what page on his site that visitor is on. But mostly he likes to see the number of people that are passing through his site all day and be available to them. He says he’s gotten some good tips about neighborhood stories from his Pingbox chats.

If you have your own blog, website or social networking page, it’s easy to add a Pingbox. Just visit the Yahoo! Messenger Pingbox Studio and click the “Create a Pingbox” button. You can customize your background, text size, display name, and whether or not you want to show your display image. You can even put in a custom message that users will see in the Pingbox when you’re online, or when you’re offline. Once you’re done, you’ll receive some code that you can copy and paste into your site.

Then just login to Yahoo! Messenger using the same Yahoo! ID under which you created your Pingbox and voila – you’ll see a new group in your contact list and if you have visitors, a count next to the group name. Note that in order to appear online and receive messages from your Pingbox, you need to be signed in to Yahoo! Messenger 10 or Yahoo! Messenger for Mac. However unlike version 10, the Mac version does not display your Pingbox visitors in your contact list.

Do you use a Pingbox on your website, blog or social networking page (e.g. Facebook, MySpace)? Tell us about your experience in the comments.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

86 Comments »

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  1. Pingbox rules, I need to implement this on my website!

    Comment by Mike — March 16, 2010 #

  2. @Mike – It would be perfect for your Contact Me page

    Sarah Bacon

    Comment by Administrator — March 18, 2010 #

  3. Really Great Product…

    Features I like at most

    1- I can use this product with my Private or Personal Yahoo! ID.
    2- My Private or Personal Yahoo! ID Would Not be disclosed to my Web Site Users
    3- My Web Site Users Do not have to login
    4- So the ID of my Web Sites Users is also not disclosed.

    Once Again a BIG THANKS goes to Yahoo!

    Comment by Wicko — March 18, 2010 #

  4. Dear Staff @Yahoo.com;

    The PingBox as well as messenger & e-Mail are a great idea for fast communication, however what if someone on the Internet sends you a virus, etc.

    Would your anti-virus be able to detect it & handle it accordingly?

    This is a concern of mind since we know that there exist thousands of hackers, spammers, etc. on the Internet attempting to get access to your PC, laptop, network, etc.

    Thanks!

    Comment by NuYoRican deCorazon — March 19, 2010 #

  5. @NuYoRican – Files cannot be sent from a Pingbox – only text.

    Sarah Bacon

    Comment by Administrator — March 19, 2010 #

  6. Excellent stuff…2 concerns
    1. Its Flash. I hate it. Why not simple javascript ?
    2. Only yahoo messenger. Its blocked in my company…Xmpp or some other open protocol (In general, yahoo msnger does not support them)

    Comment by Jigar shah — March 26, 2010 #

  7. Pingbox is a really nice feature. But why isn’t it possible to include a pingbox in yahoo profile blogs? The html-code for embedding a Pingbox there is filtered out. It is also not possible to include a link to start messenger directly from yahoo profile blog. It’s also automatically deleted from the html code.

    I really don’t understand this policy.

    Peter

    Comment by Peter — March 27, 2010 #

  8. where can i get the html-code??

    Comment by ashraf yusoff — March 30, 2010 #

  9. Great Idea !
    Thanks !
    here is mine :
    http://sites.google.com/site/aghapesardotcom/chat-with-me

    Comment by Reza.com — March 31, 2010 #

  10. @ashraf – You have to go through the steps on the Pingbox site. The last step will provide you with the html code for your site.
    http://messenger.yahoo.com/pingbox

    Sarah Bacon

    Comment by Administrator — March 31, 2010 #

  11. x(

    Comment by Matthew — April 3, 2010 #

  12. This does not work for me…
    When I try to save the Pingbox (on Windows 7) with FF 3.6.3 I get an error telling me the page needs to be refreshed (endless loop here).
    When I try to save the Pingbox with IE8 I get ‘Internal Error’…

    Comment by Serge Meeuwsen — May 2, 2010 #

  13. Now i have a unique problem!! My blog visitors are extremely targetted and usually they revisit…people may think this an advantage but the problem rose when Google Adsense banned me thinking that i m generating duplicate visits. I get 100 uniques daily that give over 2000 pageviews. Sadly within a week i expect all of them to visit again. This is because the website is specifically oriented for a college. Please help me solve this problem. Website : iscexamnotes.blogspot.com

    Comment by Danish Hasan — May 10, 2010 #

  14. Nice share. Havent heard about this feature before but it turned out to be very useful.

    Comment by Rick Hanson — July 24, 2010 #

  15. It’s going on my site today!!!

    Comment by Mike Bruneau — July 24, 2010 #

  16. Can someone please direct me to where I can implement this code on my website?

    Can this feature be toggled on and off?

    Comment by Tony the web host guide — July 25, 2010 #

  17. I need the unconditioned for my blog! I will install the today! Thank you!

    Comment by Francoise Thurnreiter — August 1, 2010 #

  18. i want to like this:

    http://www.google.com/talk/service/badge/New

    Comment by Sandeep Rana — August 2, 2010 #

  19. Hi,

    can u show me step by step how to put it using dreamweaver…

    thanks

    Comment by yoyo — August 2, 2010 #

  20. This is going on my Contact Us page!!!

    Comment by CT Website Design — August 2, 2010 #

  21. Up and running here!!

    Comment by keyword analysis research tool — August 4, 2010 #

  22. Hi, when I click in the link I´m beeing redirected to webmessenger and I can´t find anything to make my pingbox.
    Some help??
    thanks in advance

    Comment by Luis — August 9, 2010 #

  23. Cool idea, I’m going to add it to my bag of tricks for may clients. This would be great on business websites.

    Comment by AIS System — August 11, 2010 #

  24. I did not have an idea that Yahoo Messenger has Pingbox. Thanks for writing about this. It’s great for website owners esp. for users visiting the site. It gives them a recognition that they are valued for visiting the site.

    Comment by Ann from MLM System — August 13, 2010 #

  25. Visitor nicknames don’t show up in Messenger on the Mac. It just says guest8 etc.

    Comment by matt — September 9, 2010 #

  26. Hi Sarah – I think this is a great idea and looking at the installation page it seems to be very easy to set up. I have a question though – this does look alot like the Oggix platform which was heavily spammed a few years ago – can someone leave an html link within their comment and will this remain there even if I am not logged in to my Yahoo account?

    Comment by Stroller Reviews Jenny — September 13, 2010 #

  27. Love this tip. Thanks for sharing it. I think of so many applications for this. Pingbox makes it a very simple way for people to add another layer of customer service and interaction.

    Comment by Sabrina Gibson — September 26, 2010 #

  28. I don’t understand why, but this doesn’t work… Thanks anyway for this tip

    Comment by Annuaire poker — December 3, 2010 #

  29. For those of us who run a one man show you could almost use this for customer service – if someone is on your website when you are at your computer you could instantly answer questions – much like the chat box large companies have but on a smaller scale

    Comment by Dover Read — December 9, 2010 #

  30. I am using PingBox and it is a great tool. I love this.

    Comment by Self Defense Products — December 20, 2010 #

  31. Thanks for your sharing.. such a nice comments…

    Comment by Beko — February 2, 2011 #

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  33. I have been doing research on this topic. Thanks for the useful information.

    Comment by Harley Warren — March 4, 2011 #

  34. I didnt realise Pingbox was so powerful, ill have to use it on my website, thanks

    Comment by Glen, MLM Mentor — March 23, 2011 #

  35. gotten some good tips about neighborhood stories from his Pingbox chats.

    Comment by nikeairus — April 14, 2011 #

  36. Hello

    I m using Pingbox on my website,its working fine on desktop,but when i used my black berry phone to logged in to yahoo messenger then pingbox showing me offline even i m logged in on my mobile.Please let me know how to resolve that issue.Is it not work on mobile?if it is work then how to resolve that issue.?

    Comment by Yash — April 29, 2011 #

  37. Great post,

    I never thought about using a pingbox on my website.

    I am going to have to give it a try and see how it goes.

    Thanks for the great info.

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  43. i had tried this and i got some issue, that is when visitor tried to chat with admin, their message did not show in admin ym. but admin message show in visitor chat??
    is there anybody, got same issue as mine? i need solution thanks

    Firefox 6.0.2
    Yahoo Messenger 11.0.0.2014-us
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    Comment by memordial — September 11, 2011 #

  44. How to avoid Yahoo Ping Box affecting mySQL codes? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7487229/how-to-avoid-yahoo-ping-box-affecting-mysql-codes

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    Comment by iPage — December 8, 2011 #

  47. Hello ide like to ask…. is there a p[ing box that all contact list will appear, so i can sen chant message to all????

    Comment by howard — February 7, 2012 #

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  49. Hi there, I have installed the Yahoo Pingbox to my website, but when I load Yahoo messenger on my Iphone the people see me online but unaviable and can”t send me messages. When I log in Yahoo messenger on my computer everything works great… So what can I do to recieve my messages from the Pingbox to my Iphone Messenger???

    Thank you

    Comment by Gencho Tanev — March 10, 2012 #

  50. nice post Mr. Yahoo, like ping box,…

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  53. It is absurd that my Pingbox status is offline when I am logged in from my mobile Yahoo Messenger app. Please do something about this! It’s a deal breaker on an otherwise great little widget.

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