Yahoo! has had its time. When its business isn't going far, it's trying to patch some weakness to get the still loyal consumers happy. On December 3rd, 2015, Yahoo relaunches (revives) its famous messaging app: Yahoo! Messenger.
Yahoo! is an old contender in the chatting and messaging business. The company first launched Yahoo! Messenger in 1998 as an alternative to AIM. At that time, it was a desktop instant messaging app. But in the fast growing mobile sphere, Yahoo! rebooted Yahoo! Messenger to compete with the likes of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and others.
While competitors are doing pretty much similar thing, Yahoo! is still in its own league. Despite being "dead" for quite some time, Yahoo! is not giving up in trying to give its best out.
To those people that are previous fans of Yahoo! Messenger, or those that weren't satisfied with the many offerings tech companies have provide, Yahoo! Messenger's relaunch is to focus on group messaging and sharing. So no more availability status, quirky screen names or other old metaphors, Yahoo! Messenger is giving similar messaging experience like any other modern messaging app.
The new app integrates with Flickr and Tumblr.. This allows users to create and share GIFs and images instantly.
The new Yahoo! Messenger's feature is highlighting its ability to send "hundreds of photos" simultaneously to everyone inside a group conversation. Working inside the cloud, Yahoo! Messenger compresses the photos to reduce load times for everyone, but unlike others, the app also allows users to download photos in full resolution and quality.
The next is its "unsend" feature. The feature is to delete sent messages inside group conversation. Traditional messaging apps only allow the deletion of messages on the user who sent it only. With the feature, Yahoo! Messenger can wipe messages from its servers, and delete them from the recipient's device. The "Unsend" feature allows the deletion of messages, as well as photo of GIF, making them disappear for everyone in the group.
If an inappropriate message is sent, for example. If the user is quickly enough, the chances are that the recipient won't ever notice the message.
The app also borrows a feature to "like" other messages, the ability to change the name of a group and group photo. Similar to GroupMe. Furthermore, the app partners with Xobni which offers search- and people-based navigation on Microsoft Outlook, to power its Smart Contacts.
Smart Contacts is used to relate the relationship between a user's contacts, making adding people to a group faster.
By releasing the new Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! aims to succeed when it didn't the last time when building a mobile video messaging app Livetext after acquiring MessageMe in 2014. With new features, Yahoo! is hoping that it can lure more users to Messenger.
"We already have a Yahoo! Messenger in the market that we have not been maintaining actively for the last couple of years," said Austin Shoemaker, Senior Director of Product Management for Yahoo! Messenger. "This gets us back in touch with the market."
The very good reason for that is because messaging business is a battleground for tech companies. From Google to Facebook and others, chat services have exploded in popularity.
Yahoo! Messenger is the company's comeback in the messaging business. It's initially available on iOS, Android, the web, as well as Yahoo! Mail on desktop.
Attempt Rise
Yahoo! is declining in popularity, ability to compete, and also its revenue. Literally, the company is almost worth nothing.
If compared to other tech giants, Yahoo! has a market value of $33.7 billion. While this number is indeed impressive, it's accounted to its 15 percent stake in Alibaba valued at $33.2 billion. Yahoo! also owns 35.6 percent of Yahoo! Japan with a $8.8 billion value. With that added up, Yahoo!'s core business has a negative value of more than $7 billion, excluding the company's long-term debt.
Yahoo! was, and still is impressive. But now the company is down to worth less than nothing in terms of its core value.
Under Marissa Mayer, Yahoo! is still struggling. The erosion of its business value that has been going for quite some time, is down to over 29 percent since 2014. Investors are thinking about Yahoo! to break itself apart and selling itself. The company's Board of Directors are thinking to sell off its ever-floundering internet business. Including its web portal, News, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Search and pretty much everything associated with Yahoo!.
Investors tend to think that those Yahoo! assets would be more valuable if they were freed from the struggling company. As an answer, Yahoo! has been planning to spin off its Alibaba stake into its own company.
Read: The Cursed Diamond Yahoo! Owns
But despite all the troubles Yahoo! encounters, the company is not standing still to face its darkened fate. As one of its attempt, Yahoo! returned its old and "dead" product that was once the company's source of fame. The relaunch of Yahoo! Messenger is just a little difference the company can make. But its attention to some details that others didn't see, made Yahoo! stands out.
