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July 28, 2006

Yahoo Launches Messenger 8 With 180 Plugins

Michael Arrington

29 comments »

Yahoo Messenger Version 8 for Windows, which can be downloaded here, launched out of beta today. Our previous writeup of the beta launch is here.

The key new feature of Messenger 8 is that it is open to third party developers to create widgets that work within the client. Yahoo is reporting that 180 plugins have been created in the last month since the platform was opened.

The five most popular plugins are:

  • Pando: Easy, fast and reliable way to share large files – even folders – with friends, up to 1 GB at a time.
    31,757 downloads since June 20, 2006
  • YEmote: Access ALL the secret and hidden Emoticons quick and easy. Click animated smiley to be insert automatically into your text.
    29,201 downloads since July 11, 2006
  • Yahoo! Greetings eCard: Browse from a selection of eCards to send to your friend while chatting.
    13,358 downloads since June 20, 2006
  • iTunes: iTunes remote for Yahoo! Messenger. Note: you need to have iTunes installed in order to use this plug-in.
    13,125 downloads since July 18, 2006
  • Eazibo: The best way to interactively and instantly make flowcharts or diagrams, share photos and make annotations with your friend online connecting. It’s called “Instant Graphics.”
    11,900 downloads since July 18, 2006

Yahoo Messenger is the second largest IM network after MSN, and even though Yahoo and MSN have announced interoperability (and continue to expand the beta group testing it), there’s still clearly a level of competitiveness between the two teams. Yahoo sent me the chart below comparing the two services.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Friday, July 28th, 2006 at 1:56 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Diego Barros

    July 28th, 2006 at 3:32 am

    Mike: Feel free to rip in to Microsoft for not having a Mac client either. ;)

  2. Kurt

    July 28th, 2006 at 4:41 am

    The support of web standards-based plugins is huge - any online community purveyor that isn’t already myspace should be looking at how to take advantage - more thinking on my post here

  3. Ross

    July 28th, 2006 at 5:48 am

    Not only do Microsoft not have a Mac client, the Messenger client for MSN is *horrendous* and has only a quarter of the feature set of the PC version.

    Luckily there is alwasys adium

  4. someone

    July 28th, 2006 at 7:21 am

    …and Linux users are children of a lesser God…

  5. Ashish Sinha

    July 28th, 2006 at 9:42 am

    Yahoo, for a change has done some real good stuff. I found the new IM client damn cool - packed with tons of new features, cool plugins and smileys.

    Although one really starts thinking that why can’t a chat client remain a simple/stable chat client- and not be stuffed with so many things (which most of us will never use!)

    My review on Yahoo’s IM here.

    sinha.

  6. Ian Clifton

    July 28th, 2006 at 12:08 pm

    Are they moving toward Jabber or keeping their own protocol? I think every IM client should use Jabber now. It would help interconnect all the users out there and create real competition, which is always better for the consumer.

  7. Anon

    July 28th, 2006 at 4:05 pm

    So how come “Self Expression through Avatars” is considered a major feature here, but on that Korean social networking site they were called “Silly Cartoons”?

    Oh - I see - different authors… one who is prepared to accept that perhaps some people like “silly cartoons”, and one who thinks that are “nuts”……

  8. Ionut Alex. Chitu

    July 29th, 2006 at 5:09 am

    Yahoo site says they have only 25 plug-ins available, most created by Yahoo. 180 is a huge number.

    “Yahoo! Messenger with Voice Plug-ins
    25 available
    23 developer(s)”

  9. Niti

    July 29th, 2006 at 12:24 pm

    I’m an old fan of Yahoo IM. However, the webcam quality really excels on MSN. Yahoo has to work on that since that’s an essential feature of chatting and none of the emoticon junk.

  10. Here

    July 29th, 2006 at 2:07 pm

    How about on the Mac.

  11. DN

    July 30th, 2006 at 11:27 pm

    Good news !

    But Yahoo still has bad quality of voice chat.
    I vote for GTalk for voice chat !

    Yahoo should keep trying hard…

    Read more
    http://gauss.apisnetworks.com/...../index.php

  12. Julian Bond

    July 30th, 2006 at 11:54 pm

    “Yahoo Messenger is the second largest IM network after MSN”. What about Skype? I suspect that Skype has overtaken YM! and is well on the way to overtake MSN. The real problem here is which statistic we’re using. Is it downloads, accounts, or average currently online?

    And how does the Skype API developer community compare with the equivalents for YM! and MSN?

    Really, you can’t talk about IM now without mentioning Skype.

  13. Mr. Cheese

    August 16th, 2006 at 3:33 pm

    Julian, I think you may be wrong. Whenever I log onto Skype it claims there are 4.x million users online. Y!M has by far more users than that. I think Skype, though I do use it for IM here and there is many generations of features behind most other IM clients, and has a lot less users than Y!M.

  14. medo

    February 26th, 2007 at 4:17 pm

    very good

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