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Oath is Killing Off Yahoo Messenger on July 17 (betanews.com)
Yahoo Messenger is to be discontinued in just over a month. Yahoo owner Oath has announced that it is killing off its famous Messenger service on July 17. From a report: After this date, chatting will no longer be available, and users have just six months to download their chat histories. At the moment, there is no direct replacement for Yahoo Messenger, but users are being advised that they can request an invite for the beta version of the invite-only group messaging app Yahoo Squirrel. In an FAQ about the announcement, Yahoo addresses why the decision to shutter the service was taken. "We know we have many loyal fans who have used Yahoo Messenger since its beginning as one of the first chat apps of its kind. As the communications landscape continues to change over, we're focusing on building and introducing new, exciting communications tools that better fit consumer needs."
As long as ICQ is still running, I am fine.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Only time I ever had it was plugged into Trillian and then later Pidgin as I already had a Yahoo account, from an earlier Geocities account, and... well, why not.
I think I literally never used it past tested that it worked.
Didn't do anything that MSN/AOL/ICQ/etc. couldn't do.
After this date, chatting will no longer be available, and users have just six months to download their chat histories.
For pete's sake, how long does it take to download a chat history?
I remember it when we used it at the office way back. It was not as intrusive as a phonecall and not as official as an email. And more convinient than walking to somebody to ask in person.
Somehow then it was not abused that much. When the companby closed, I never saw anything like it used anywhere else.
It also showed me a lot about (online) privacy where it took about 5 minutes to be able to phone somebody at their place of work. And that was before google existed.
And having a (fake) female name with some random image showed me how creepy some guys are.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I feel no love for Yahoo messenger, but if you are planning a replacement, discontinuing the current one is a really bad business decision. All your users will leave, when they could have been transferred easily by merely updating their clients.
This is how Microsoft went from 14% of the smart-phone market to 1% of the smart-phone market: by bringing out an incompatible version (in their case it was especially pathetic because the underlying OS was still based on WinCE, they just chose not to expose that to developers).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
is that they are going to refactor the new messenger app to allow harvesting and reselling more meta data
Old needs: instant messaging
New needs: Tracking, profiling, advertising...
I miss the days when electronic communications protocols lasted over a century.
STOP - Telegram era over, Western Union says 2/2/2006 2:30:26 PM ET
"DENVER - For more than 150 years, messages of joy, sorrow and success came in signature yellow envelopes hand-delivered by a courier. Now the Western Union telegram is officially a thing of the past. "
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"We need to spy on our users and sell their data to make money with a free application today. We'll close down 'messenger' and open 'squirel' which is pretty much the same thing but with a EULA that has language embedded in it somewhere which will let us collect your data."
It's not hidden, it's like the first thing they tell you in the "Privacy Policy", and yes those are the ironic quotes.
https://policies.oath.com/us/e...
I copied some of it below. Right up front you'll see that they read your email content.
Your agree that anything you post or upload, including voice remains your property and you grant Oath and oath users a license to do whatever they want with it. So it sounds like their policy is like almost everyone else's policy.
Here's come copy and paste of a portion so you can get a feel for it.
Information Collection and Use - General
We may collect and combine information when you interact with Oath Services including:
Information You Provide to Us. We may collect the information that you provide to us, such as:
When you create an account with an Oath Service or brand. (Please note, when you use our Services, we may recognize you or your devices even if you are not signed in to our Services.) Oath may use device IDs, cookies, and other signals, including information obtained from third parties, to associate accounts and/or devices with you.
When you use our Services to communicate with others or post, upload or store content (such as comments, photos, voice inputs, videos, emails, messaging services and attachments).
Oath analyzes and stores all communications content, including email content from incoming and outgoing mail. This allows us to deliver, personalize and develop relevant features, content, advertising and Services.
When you otherwise use our Services, such as title queries, watch history, page views, search queries, view the content we make available or install any Oath software such as plugins.
When you sign up for paid Services, use Services that require your financial information or complete transactions with us or our business partners, we may collect your payment and billing information.
Device Information. We collect information from your devices (computers, mobile phones, tablets, etc.), including information about how you interact with our Services and those of our third-party partners and information that allows us to recognize and associate your activity across devices and Services. This information includes device specific identifiers and information such as IP address, cookie information, mobile device and advertising identifiers, browser version, operating system type and version, mobile network information, device settings, and software data. We may recognize your devices to provide you with personalized experiences and advertising across the devices you use.
Location Information. We collect location information from a variety of sources. You can learn more about and manage your location permissions on our Locations page and by visiting the location settings tool on your devices.
Information from Cookies and Other Technologies.
We collect information when you access content, advertising, sites, interactive widgets, applications, and other products (both on and off of our Services) where Oath’s data collection technologies (such as web beacons, development tools, cookies and other technologies, etc.) are present. These data collection technologies allow us to understand your activity on and off our Services and to collect and store information when you interact with Services we offer to partners.
This information also includes the kind of content or ads served, viewed or clicked on; the frequency and duration of your activities; the sites or apps you used before accessing our Services and where you went next; whether you engaged with specific content or ads; and whether you went on to visit an advertiser's website, downloaded an advertiser’s app, purchased a product or service advertised, or took other actions.
ICQ is not still running -- at least, not the way it used to. When I log in to my account (which I had been using continuously since 1996 or 1997), I find that everything has been locked down. Trying to send messages to anyone results in the reply, "Your account has been compromised. Please proceed to the following link to unblock your account", followed by the URL of a form hosted on the ICQ website. The form offers to unlock the account upon receipt of a mobile phone number. Googling shows that this problem isn't unique to me; a lot of other people have reported the same problem. I've tried contacting ICQ support to insist that my account is not compromised, but the support reps who respond say the only way they will unlock the account is via SMS. I never give my phone number to IM/social networking companies and am not about to start now. The "Your account has been compromised" message is either a ruse to get everyone to hand over their personal details to ICQ, or else ICQ has suffered a massive, undisclosed data breach. Either way, I'm not using the service any more.
One of the biggest, yet least appreciated drivers of success in the instant messaging market is having huge masses of free users. That's what provided the foundation for MSN Messenger and Skype to succeed. (The same marketing model is a large driver of Facebook's success) Knowing that many of your friends were already using X is a good reason for you to start using it too. Another driver, at least in my opinion, is the ability to connect to your network using third party applications. That lets you get more users with no cost to you beyond the bandwidth and server load charges. That's why applications like Trillian and Pidgin were so popular.
But Yahoo Messenger shot itself in the foot when it changed the API several times before closing it altogether. Sure, it unloaded all those leeches who were using third party apps and hence weren't seeing the ads the official client carried. But at the same time it drastically cut into the relevance for the users of the official client. Why use Yahoo if many of your friends are migrating to $otherapp?
In my opinion, Yahoo has made a similar critical error in just dumping its current user base. What I think they should be doing is maintaining that user base and offering a free and extremely painless migration to Squirrel once it is ready for prime time. Making Squirrel invite only is doubling down on a bad bet. Any invite only community is going to be small. Who is going to want to go through the hassle of asking around for an invite when most of their friends and colleagues are already using Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype, KIk, Snapchat et all? Through in any lingering feelings of abandonment and resentment from the former Yahoo Messenger user base and you have a recipe for market failure.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
Chat rooms, mic, camera, the ability for two people to chat.
The lack of fast broadband did not matter and users all over the world could enjoy the service.
The service worked when the rest of the internet was just understanding how to consider software for text, cam, VOIP.
To all the people who designed and then worked on the projects
Thank you all for the amazing work and design that no other brand had ready.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"