February 18, 2010 on 12:39 pm | In 10 version | 4 Comments
Thanks to everyone who has voted for Yahoo! Messenger in About.com’s Reader’s Choice Awards. We are still behind in the Best IM Feature category, for which our video call feature in version 10 was nominated.
Click the link below to vote for us – we appreciate it!
Vote for video calls as Best IM Feature
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
February 11, 2010 on 4:50 pm | In 10 version, 9.0 version | 18 Comments
This Sunday is Valentine’s Day here in the United States. I think we should show our love all year round, but people love excuses for buying gifts and expensive chocolates. We ladies don’t mind receiving them either.
But if you’re not with your loved one this Valentine’s Day, don’t forget to send your hugs and kisses with Yahoo! Messenger 10.
Turn on the Falling Hearts IMVironment while you’re chatting to add some romance to the conversation (bit the Buzz button for some extra spice).
Or send one of our loving emoticons like lovestruck (
), blushing (
), the always popular kiss (
), big hug (
) and a favorite hidden emoticon, the rose (
)… check out the full list of Emoticons to find the right one for you. Hopefully you won’t be sending this one on Valentine’s Day: 
.
We’ve also got some saucy audibles under the “Flirts” category including classic pickup lines like “I hope you know CPR cuz you take my breath away” and pirate-enhanced flattery, “Arr! Your booty shivers me timbers!”.
And just when the kissing and blushing emoticons are flying back and forth, throw in the “Is it just me or is it getting really hot in here?” audible. To send a flirtatious audible, click the audibles button in the IM window, go to More Audibles > See All Audibles.
If you haven’t had a chance to try out the new video call feature, what better reason than to tell someone, almost in person, that you love them? I promise, it’s almost like being there. And don’t worry, you can send all the emoticons and audibles you want while you’re on the call.
Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone!
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
February 1, 2010 on 9:51 am | In 10 version, Mac version | 424 Comments
About.com’s annual Reader’s Choice Awards are here and we’ve been nominated for a few awards in the Best IM category:
- Best IM Feature: video calls | vote
- Best Mac IM | vote
- Best IM chat rooms | vote
The winners are determined by you, the readers, so head over to About.com to vote for Yahoo! Messenger in the above categories. Voting begins today and runs through February 25.
Thanks to About.com readers for nominating us. We appreciate it!
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
January 22, 2010 on 3:27 pm | In 10 version | 10 Comments
I had the pleasure of demo’ing Yahoo! Messenger 10 to some high school students that stopped by Yahoo! yesterday.
After a personal welcome from Yahoo! co-founder David Filo, they got a Yahoo! campus tour, drank in our free coffee and soda, and met with other product managers from Mail, Connected TV, Mobile, the Yahoo! homepage, and our Privacy/Policy team.
They were all enrolled in a tech-related class in their high schools, so they had a lot of great questions about Yahoo! Messenger and internet communications in general.
Of course I worried that I would seem old to them. So I switched my desktop wallpaper to Lady Gaga, queued up Rihanna on the Yahoo! Music Player plug-in, and played the Kei$ha “Tik Tok” video when I demo’d our inline media player feature. I’m sure they saw right through me…
There was talk about Facebook, but hardly any about Twitter. They wanted to know when we’d have video calling for groups of friends, and they wanted to know when people would be able to chat with whomever they wanted on IM, instead of just friends on their same network. That was a great segue for me to talk about our partnership with Windows Live Messenger. Hopefully we’ll open up to more networks in the future.
Despite the reputation of teens being totally uninhibited online, I found this group of students thoughtful and cautious about their online usage.
On a funny note, they asked if we would hire someone if they revealed they didn’t have a MySpace page or weren’t on Facebook. I said that’s ok because when I first interviewed at Yahoo!, I had an AOL email address.
Special thanks to the students for checking out Messenger 10 and for asking great questions. I have a feeling that some years from now, I’ll be managing new products that they come up with.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
