We, at Yahoo! Messenger, thought we might make this Easter a bit special for you all. Today, we are letting you on to a couple of hidden or “Easter egg” features within Yahoo! Messenger:
(1). List of Hidden Emoticons – use them to surprise your friends
(2). Hold down the windows key and press Y to bring up Messenger no matter what window you’re in.
We hope you will enjoy these hidden features as much as you have enjoyed using Yahoo! Messenger.
Sometimes it’s hard to say goodbye when you’re IM’ing with a friend. You, or maybe your friend, always want to get that last word in, share just one more link, tell one more story.
Then there are those friends that just don’t know how to really say goodbye. You think the conversation is over and “ping!”, a new message comes in. How do you get them to say goodbye?
Thankfully Yahoo! Messenger has a few ways for you to get your message across, in the most humorous way of course.
We’ve got a set of Goodbye audibles that let you impersonate a number of silly characters who all have their own excuse for why they need to skedaddle. “Gotta go..my meds are kicking in!” says one nervous looking fellow. A pony-tailed woman with a choke dollar purrs “Gotta go. My parole officer needs to use the computer.”
Then there’s the audible that won’t shut up – the flight attendant with the incessant “Buh-bye. Bye now. Buh-bye.” And rather than lie to your friend about a meeting you have to run to, just tell them the truth with the spectacled pooch: “Gotta go, Gotta go. I gotta pee!”
We’ve also got a few emoticons that fit the goodbye ritual. There’s the “wave” emoticon which also doubles as a hello emoticon. I’m also a fan of “talk to the hand” emoticon . It’s a more abrupt way to end the conversation, but it has its uses. If you’ve really had enough, try the “not listening” emoticon .
One of my favorite ways to sign off IM? The “hug” emoticon.
And since it’s a cinch to share and watch videos in the Yahoo! Messenger conversation window, you can always send them a goodbye classic (watch below).
This week we launched a new integration with Delicious.com, Yahoo!’s handy bookmark storage and sharing service.
Now when you send or receive a link in an IM conversation, you can easily save it to your Delicious account and share it with friends. Here’s how it works…
Imagine that during an IM conversation, a friend sends you a link that you want to save. It could be a cool new website, important driving directions or a memorable video.
To save it, hover your mouse on the hyperlinked web address and look for a small “Bookmark” button nearby. Click it and a window will open up where you can enter and save details about the link to your Delicious account.
You can enter in notes about the link (“Where Sarah stayed in New Zealand”) as well as tags that will help other Delicious users find your link (new zealand, eco resort, four stars).
If you already have an account with Delicious, you may need to first visit Delicious.com to link it to your Yahoo! ID. But if you’re new to Delicious, you can create your account using your Yahoo! ID right in Yahoo! Messenger.
Delicious is not just a place to store your bookmarks, it’s also a place to see what’s hot and trending and find other Yahoo! users that are into your favorite websites. But you can use Delicious just as a private place to store your bookmarks. When saving a link, just click the “Mark as Private” box.
Yahoo! Messenger also supports the sharing of Delicious.com updates. So when you save a link to Delicious, your friends will see your latest update in Yahoo! Messenger, on their profile page, in Yahoo! Mail etc. It’s a great way to share what sites you’re into at the moment. You can always turn off Delicious updates on the Manage My Updates page on your Yahoo! profile.
The Yahoo! Messenger / Delicious.com feature is available to users on Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 and 10. So what are you waiting for? Go try it out and start sharing your favorite links with friends.
And as always, we welcome feedback about your experience with the product. Just go to the Help menu in Yahoo! Messenger 10 and select “Send Feedback…” to get started.
As a Yahoo! Messenger user, you’re used to seeing ads when you’re chatting with friends. We know you see ads all over the Internet, so it’s always a challenge for us to serve up compelling ads that are unique.
This weekend you’ll see ads in Yahoo! Messenger for Discovery Channel’s new Life series, which begins March 21. Narrated by Oprah Winfrey, Life is an 11-part series about the natural world around us, and is the follow up to the critically acclaimed series, Planet Earth.
Rather than just offer up the usual banner ads, we’ve partnered with Life to integrate some fun Messenger functionality into their ads. If you see a Life ad in Yahoo! Messenger, be sure to click to expand it. You can watch a video preview of the series and then with just a click, share it with your IM friends, update your status to tell your friends about the show, or even change your display image to one of the cool animal images from the show.
While we know ads can sometimes distract you from what you’re doing in Yahoo! Messenger, we hope you’ll find that these special Life ads instead enhance your IM experience by giving you something fun to share with your friends.
Sometimes it’s hard to say goodbye when you’re IM’ing with a friend. You, or maybe your friend, always want to get that last word in, share just one more link, tell one more story. 
which also doubles as a hello emoticon. I’m also a fan of “talk to the hand” emoticon 
. It’s a more abrupt way to end the conversation, but it has its uses. If you’ve really had enough, try the “not listening” emoticon 
. 
This week we launched a new integration with 
Today we released an updated version of 
