Now you can take the best of Yahoo! Messenger with you and stay in touch with friends through your iPhone or iPod Touch, no matter where you are.

A short demo video is included below. Here are the top features of the new app:

Instant message: Send text messages back and forth with your friends, including emoticons and web links.

Photo sharing: Take a photo on your iPhone and send that, or grab one from your photo gallery to share.

Stealth settings: Sign in as invisible, or change your status to invisible once you’re in the app.

Custom status message: Enter a custom status message for your friends to see. You can even include a web link with it.

Recent conversations archive: Under Messages, tap a contact and you’ll see your most recent conversation. You can type in a message from there to start chatting again.

Special idle state: If you have to leave the app for whatever reason, like a call comes in or you click a link in an IM that takes you to Safari, the Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone app will keep you signed in but change your status to idle. That way you can continue to receive messages and provided you return to the app within ten minutes, pick up where you left off.

Additional settings: Tap the Settings icon to change the sort order of your contact list, or to show or hide offline contacts in your list.

Check out the short video below to see the app in action (click here for a high quality version of the video). Background music in the demo was created by one of our own team members, Felix and his Slimcat Productions (thanks!).

The Yahoo! Messenger for the iPhone application is free and can be downloaded through the iTunes App Store or through the App Store on your iPhone or iPod Touch (search for Yahoo! Messenger).

Even if you don’t have an iPhone, Yahoo! Messenger is available for other types of mobile phones including the Blackberry. Visit our mobile site to find out what works with your phone.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

UPDATE: The Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone app is now available. Click here for more info

Enjoy,

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

Click here for higher quality version (Quicktime required)

In addition, the mobile team fixed the MySpace log in issue. Turns out that users with a lot of contacts were experiencing timeouts when oneConnect would try to log in to get Pulse updates etc. This should be fixed now so if you were experiencing issues before, please try it again.

You can install the oneConnect update on your iPhone by visiting the Yahoo! Mobile website, or just search for oneConnect in the AppStore on your iPhone or in iTunes. If you already have oneConnect installed, you should see a red icon on the AppStore icon on your iPhone or in iTunes, indicating an update is available.

To leave feedback on this latest version or to see what other oneConnect users are talking about, head over to the oneConnect suggestion board.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

Here’s a quick rundown of oneConnect’s top features:

Full address book
oneConnect integrates contacts from your Yahoo! Address Book, iPhone, and many social networks. To add social networks to your oneConnect, tap on the “Settings” icon at the bottom, then hit “My Accounts”. Once you’ve added a social network account, oneConnect will import all your contacts. Tap on the “Contacts” icon in the bottom bar to access them.

Send and receive instant messages, SMS
Once you sign in with your Yahoo! ID, your entire Yahoo! Messenger contact list will appear. Just tap on the “Message” icon in the bottom bar, then tap the “+” in the upper right corner to start a new IM (or start one from a friend’s listing under “Contacts”). You can insert your favorite emoticons into your conversation and you’ll see your Avatar or display image as well as your friend’s.

When you’re messaging, you’ll notice a “Y!” icon to the left of the text box. Tap on that and it changes to an SMS icon. When you want to send a SMS message, make sure the SMS icon appears there and just start typing. Note that you must have the mobile phone number for your friend already entered into their contact info. To go back to sending IMs, tap on the icon again to bring up the Y! icon.

Updates from your friends (Pulse)
In addition to IMs and SMS text messages, you can keep up with what your friends are doing on your favorite social networks. Tap on the Pulse icon to see a running list of updates from your friends. See the latest photos from your Flickr friends, get status updates from your Facebook contacts, or see what your Twitter buddies have to say. Different views let you look at all updates together, just status updates or just photo updates.

You can also update your own status on your social networks from oneConnect. When you’re in the Pulse area, tap the “My Status” button in the upper right corner. Enter a new status message and it gets sent out too all of your networks at once.

Yahoo! oneConnect is available for free from the Yahoo! Mobile website. To install it, click the “Get Yahoo! oneConnect” button on the page to access the oneConnect listing in the App Store on iTunes (or click here to launch it immediately in iTunes). It works on all versions of the iPhone.

Try it out and let us know what you think here on the blog or on the oneConnect Suggestion Board.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

But now, with a couple of features available in Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 Beta, you no longer have to sign off and drop off. You can have incoming IMs and voice calls forwarded to your mobile phone. Here’s how it works…

Above your Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 contact list you’ll notice two new buttons – an icon of a small mobile phone and a Yahoo! Voice button. Click on the mobile phone icon and select “Set Up Mobile Device”. A small window will appear where you can register your mobile phone with Yahoo! Messenger.

Once registered, you can turn on IM forwarding. After signing out of Yahoo! Messenger, you will still appear online to your friends but with an “I’m Mobile” status message. Friends can then IM you and the messages will be forwarded to your mobile phone as text messages (SMS). Reply to the SMS from your phone and your friend will receive it in Messenger. So even when you’re away from your computer, you can still receive and reply to IMs.

To enable IM forwarding whenever you sign out, select the “Always Sign in to [your mobile number]” from the mobile phone icon. If you prefer to enable it occasionally, go to the Messenger menu when you’re ready to sign out and choose “Sign in to [your mobile number]”. Find out more about IM forwarding

The same kind of forwarding can be set up for voice calls. If you’re signed out and a friend tries to call you via PC-to-PC or on your Phone In number, the call can be immediately forwarded to another phone you have (mobile or landline). A Phone Out account is required. When calls are forwarded to you, they are subject to the standard per minute rates of our Phone Out service.

To enable call forwarding, click the “Yahoo! Voice” button above your contact list and select “Set Up Call Forwarding”. Indicate which number you want your incoming calls forwarded to and you’re done. Once you set up call forwarding, it will even forward calls when you are signed into Yahoo! Messenger. So if you prefer to receive calls in Messenger when you’re signed in, just return to the button and select “Call Forwarding > Disabled”. Find out more about call forwarding

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

Most mobile phone users use the mobile web version of Yahoo! Messenger by visiting http://m.yahoo.com through their phone’s web browser. But on select devices, like a Blackberry, a more robust, downloadable application is available that includes some key extras like the ability to notify you when new IMs come in, even if you’re doing something else on the phone. The Blackberry version also offers graphical emoticons, and the ever-popular Buzz feature.

If you have a Blackberry, there are a couple of ways to get Yahoo! Messenger. Visit the Yahoo! Messenger download page on the Blackberry site (scroll to the bottom and click the Download button), or on your Blackberry, select the Internet Browser icon on the homepage and navigate to http://www.blackberry.com/yahoodownload.

It’s free to download Yahoo! Messenger and use it on your Blackberry, but note that carrier airtime, usage fees and other taxes may apply. Check the details of your Blackberry’s data plan with your mobile provider. Yahoo! Messenger is available for the following Blackberry devices: BlackBerry® 7100, 7200, 7500, 7700, 8700 and 8800 series, BlackBerry® Pearl™, and BlackBerry® Curve™. Yahoo! Messenger is not available for Blackberry users on AT&T.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

Click here for more information on Yahoo! Messenger & 3

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

- Full conversation view which allows for a running conversation rather than the back and forth “SMS” style exchanges in the old version.

- A more appealing look to the application that now includes status icons (busy, idle), Avatars and display images.

- New lighter version that speeds performance.

- Support for more devices. If you couldn’t use Yahoo! Messenger on your mobile phone previously, be sure to try this new Beta version.

The application also offers some handy customization features for your contact list. You can display your friends by most recently contacted, those that are online, or all (offline and online). If you like to see your contacts sorted by groups you’ve created, just click the “Show Groups” link.

A handy search box also makes it easy to find a friend on your list without scrolling through multiple screens. You can also add contacts right from your phone. Don’t want to be contacted? Click the “Go Invisible” link to enter stealth mode.

To try the new Yahoo! Messenger for Mobile Beta, go to http://yahoo.com on your mobile phone (or http://m.yahoo.com if it doesn’t redirect automatically), and then click the “Messenger (Beta)” link.

Check out this earlier blog post for more information on mobile features for Yahoo! Messenger.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

If you’re into mobile messaging, the Helio Ocean will be hard to resist. Unlike traditional mobile phones that require you to sign into each service when you want to email or IM, the Ocean integrates all your options into a single messaging hub. “Just start typing a name from Ocean’s idle screen and the Helio Smart Dialer searches the address book by first and last name and pulls up full contact information, complete with icons to show if a person is logged in to Yahoo! Messenger, AIM or Windows Live Messenger.” And when a new IM message comes in, you get an alert on the screen which you can click to respond or ignore.

There are other Yahoo! services integrated into the phone including Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Address book, which gets synced automatically with your contact list. The wondrous thing about the Helio is the online services are seamlessly integrated into the Ocean’s features. For example, when you do a web search, you get results from Yahoo!, Google, Amazon and Wikipedia, all in separate tabs for the choosing.

In addition to the cool messaging integrations, the Helio Ocean offers an array of multimedia features like external stereo speakers, Bluetooth, a 2.0 megapixel camera, plus support for music storage and playback (or other files). And soon after launch, they’ll offer a custom MySpace application that lets you add, edit and view photos and profiles.

I don’t have a Helio Ocean in hand so I can’t give you intimate details, but head over to Slashgear for a great hands-on review of the device. The Helio Ocean is priced at $295 and is available at Helio stores or online at http://www.helio.com.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

When you’re in range of a wireless network, you can download music from Yahoo! Music Unlimited, share your music with friends over Yahoo! Messenger, and tune into Yahoo! Music LAUNCHcast Radio. When you’re no longer connected wirelessly, just switch over to My Library mode and listen to 4GB+ of your music that’s stored on the device.

The Yahoo! Messenger integration on the Sansa Connect is similar to the features in Yahoo! Music Jukebox. When you’re connected to a WiFi network, you can sign into Yahoo! Messenger and give online friends access to your Yahoo! Music playlists. And you can have your Yahoo! Messenger status display the song you’re listening to.

Check out the Yahoo! Music blog to find out more about this new Sandisk player. And here’s a comprehensive review from Gadgetaholic.com. Hopefully we’ll get one here in the Messenger offices soon so I can give the Yahoo! Messenger features a more thorough test drive. Stay tuned!

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager