Here at Yahoo!, we aspire to make the world’s daily habits inspiring and entertaining. More than ever, we’re focused on building products that are beautiful and meaningful for our users. Sometimes, this means we have to make tough decisions — like closing down features that we feel aren’t adding enough value for you. This helps us spend more energy on creating experiences that make Yahoo! the most fun way to spend your time.
With this in mind, we have decided to discontinue several Yahoo! product features. This will enable us to refocus our efforts on modernizing our core Yahoo! products experiences and of course, create new ones. You can find more details below, including how the closures will work.
Yahoo! Messenger Public Chat Rooms
The Yahoo! Messenger Public Chat Rooms will close down on December 14, 2012.
Yahoo! Messenger Pingbox
As of December 14, 2012, Pingbox will no longer be available on Yahoo! Messenger. If you’ve installed Pingbox on your blog or social networks, please click here to learn how to uninstall it.
Yahoo! Messenger interoperability with Microsoft Windows Live Messenger
Yahoo! Messenger will no longer be interoperable with Microsoft Windows Live Messenger as of December 14, 2012. Microsoft buddies will still appear on your Messenger contact list, but they will be greyed out, and if you try to send instant messages to them, the messages will not be delivered.
Yahoo! Voice Phone In and Phone Out feature
Effective January 30, 2013, we will no longer offer Yahoo! Voice Phone In and Phone Out capabilities, our co-branded landline and mobile phone service from Jajah. As of today, users can no longer add new funds to their accounts, and active users who currently have a balance in their accounts will receive emailed instructions in December from Jajah on how to request a refund. You can find more information on how to ask for a refund here, and you can contact Jajah with any questions at yahoovoice@jajah.com. Free Messenger-to-Messenger calls will still be offered through Yahoo! Messenger.
Thank you to everyone who have used these features. We plan to keep innovating and building great Yahoo! products that will delight our users in the years to come.
Bring your virtual world to life with OurWorld IMVironment for Yahoo! Messenger! In this latest addition to the IMVironment suite, which currently includes Emoticats, Dilbert and Flickr, you can create your own styled avatar and chat with your friends in a safe, virtual space designed to reflect your personal style.
Create a unique avatar that screams YOU!
With a pool of over 30,000 items, you can uniquely customize your avatar with a vast array of virtual items, including clothing, accessories, hairstyles, and pets. Chat and dance the night away with your friends, while earning coins for new items. As you level-up your avatar, you get to unlock exclusive new features – it’s easy and fun!
Design your own virtual space Your OurWorld Condo can be decorated with furniture items that can be sized and moved around within your new virtual home to your heart’s content. Hang out with friends, dance, chat, and play mini-games to earn new furniture for your Condo.
Launching OurWorld IMVironment
While chatting with your friends, click on the ‘IMVironments’ button on the top-right of the chat window. Simply choose the ‘OurWorld Condo Game’ icon, and in mere seconds, you’ll be chatting with your friend in your virtual Condo!
Check out the video here for a sneak peek into OurWorld.
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.
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 
