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."

Comments

Who cares?

[dunkelfalke]

As long as ICQ is still running, I am fine.

Re:Who cares?

[jwhyche]

I switched to trillian a long time ago after I started seeing ads in ICQ. I also still remember my icq number better than my telephone number. The android client handles icq quite well.

They finally tried to barf up a linux client for trillian a few years back but the windows client runs better on wine than it did.

bad idea

[phantomfive]

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).

Re:bad idea

[iggymanz]

do these users generate money? if not the thing should have been killed years ago

Re:bad idea

[93 Escort Wagon]

do these users generate money? if not the thing should have been killed years ago

Well, given that "Yahoo" is part of the name, the answer is obviously no - regardless of whatever words follow that.

what they mean to say..

[Kwirl]

is that they are going to refactor the new messenger app to allow harvesting and reselling more meta data

"better fits consumer needs"

[Anonymous Coward]

Old needs: instant messaging
New needs: Tracking, profiling, advertising...

ICQ is not still running

[psychonaut]

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.

I predict...

[morethanapapercert]

I predict that Yahoo Squirrel will struggle to find relevance and market share once it comes out of beta and is open to the public. The instant messaging and group communications space is already pretty crowded. Whether it be business or individual use focused, there is several well established competitors.

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.