Stars & Stripes for your Avatar
Visit the Fourth of July section on Yahoo! Avatars and dress your Avatar in some patriotic gear. Choose from flag-themed clothing and backgrounds filled with fireworks.

Skin it red or blue
Change your Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 skin to ruby red, icy blue or sky blue. Click the gold dot near the very top of the 9.0 Messenger window.

Wave your flag
Don’t forget about the hidden emoticon for the US flag. Hover your mouse on the emotion to see the text shortcut ==>

Red, white & blue display images
Click on one of the images below to change your display image in Yahoo! Messenger 9.0. If you’re on a different version of Messenger, right click and save the image to your desktop. Then manually add it to your Yahoo! Messenger.

Happy Fourth of July to everyone!

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

If you’re like me, you have a variety of people in your contact list – some are from work, some are friends, others are family. As a result, I have several groups in my contact list. While the groups make it easier for me to find someone in my list, it also enables me to use some handy features for quickly communicating with each group.

When you right-click on a group name in your contact list, you’ll see a few options. The first is “Broadcast an IM”. When you select this feature, a new IM window pops up and provides a place for you to type your message. When you click Send, that IM gets sent to everyone in that group. No need to open multiple windows to contact each one of them, we’ll do it for you. When someone responds, it will come back to you as a new IM conversation between you and that friend.

The menu also offers “Start a conference”. This is one of the more fun features in Yahoo! Messenger and it enables you to start a private chat room with your friends. Your friends will receive an invite, asking them to join you in a conference. Conferences are a great way to plan group events, discuss current events, or just kill time.

Even if you haven’t created groups in your contact list, you can still easily start a conference with a group of friends without having to IM each one separately. Just select multiple contacts from your list using the keyboard/mouse combo SHIFT + click or CTRL + click. Then right-click on one of the selected contacts, go to “More Actions” and select “Start a conference”.

And if there are certain groups you’d prefer not to be available to (like your work friends when you’re signed on over the weekend at home), you can also change stealth settings by group. Just right click on a group name in your list and select “Stealth Settings”. Then choose “Appear permanently offline to selected contacts”.

We use the word permanent in that description because your stealth setting for that group will persist if you sign out and sign back in again. To go back to appearing online to that group of contacts, right-click again and choose Stealth Settings > “Appear online to selected contacts”.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

Even more exciting for us is that the customer who placed the billionth call did it while using Yahoo! Messenger.

The historic billionth call on the JAJAH platform was made by Ila Zeff, a 29 year old resident of San Francisco, CA. Mrs Zeff made the call on Yahoo! Messenger using her Phone Out account. She was calling her mother in India, whom she calls at least weekly since moving to the United States from India.

Mrs Zeff said. “I use Yahoo! Voice to call my mother at least once a week. She still can’t believe I’m calling her from America and often says it sounds like I’m just up the road. I haven’t even told her I’m calling from my computer – she wouldn’t believe me.”

Congratulations to Jajah and special thanks to Mrs. Zeff for using Yahoo! Messenger to make her calls. We promise not to tell your mom.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

In addition to the Messenger client, there are a few other items that you can add at the same time while installing Yahoo! Messenger 9.0: Yahoo! Toolbar, setwww.yahoo.com as your browser’s home page, and set Yahoo! as your default search provider (in the search box that’s built into your browser window).

On the first screen of the installer, the additional items are listed. You’ll also notice two items at the top – typical install and custom install. Click on the custom install link and it will show you a more detailed set of options for your install including desktop and quick launch shortcuts, Yahoo! Toolbar, and the homepage and search settings mentioned earlier (pictured below). Note that if you already have some of these things installed or set (e.g. you already have Yahoo! as your homepage), they won’t appear in the list of options.

These same options are offered during the automatic upgrade process that happens when we offer you a new version at sign-in (which many of you are now seeing for Yahoo! Messenger 9.0). These same customization options are available in that installation wizard as well.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

For Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone, this means you’ll get notified when a new IM message arrives, even if you aren’t actually running the app. Our new version with push notifications is not ready yet, but we wanted to let you know that we are working on it and hope to have it out soon.

We’ll let you know here on the blog when it’s ready.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

The fundraising drives features a friendly competition among the Armed Forces –- Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy and Coast Guard — to see which branch’s supporters can have the biggest impact on classrooms. As of June 9th, they have raised more than $130,000, and the Army is barely hanging on to the lead (check out the leaderboard as the tension builds in real-time).

To help raise awareness for this effort, Yahoo! Avatars teamed up with Colbert to make some custom Stephen Colbert Avatars and accessories. So go put on your Colbert Avatar gear to show your support for the “Support Our Troops” campaign. You can also donate to the campaign to help fund the classroom projects.

Oh and don’t be fooled by Colbert’s full head of hair in his Avatar pics. In a recent show of solidarity, Stephen Colbert, on President Obama’s order, had his head shaved by show guest General Ray Odierno. Watch the video to see the clippers in action (go to the 4:00 mark for the good stuff):

In an effort to provide the best experience for our users and maintain high security standards, we will officially retire Yahoo! Messenger versions 6.0 through 7.5 in August, 2009. This means that if you are currently using a version of Yahoo! Messenger that is below 8.0, you will no longer be able to sign in and use it after the retirement date in August.

If you are one of these users, you’ll begin seeing messages in-product about the upcoming retirement. You have several options for continuing to use Yahoo! Messenger:

Option 1: Download the latest version for Windows
You can use Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 which offers enhanced security as well as better protection from spam (info | video demo | download). It was even voted the best overall client in the 2009 About.com IM Awards. 9.0 also includes more advanced features like voice calling, free mobile text messaging (SMS), as well as the ability to IM with friends that use Windows Live™ Messenger.

Option 2: Use Yahoo! Messenger for the Web
If you can’t use the latest version mentioned above, you can always sign in to Yahoo! Messenger for the Web from any web browser. No extra download or installation is required. With our web version, you can send IM’s as well as SMS text messages to your friend’s mobile phones for free. Our web version also includes anywhere archiving, allowing you to access your message history from any computer or browser. Try it now at http://webmessenger.yahoo.com.

Option 3: Use the built-in IM feature in Yahoo! Mail
Both versions of Yahoo! Mail offer a built-in feature that lets you send and receive IMs. If you’re using the all-new Yahoo! Mail, just click the status menu next to your name in the upper header and change your status to “Available”. This will sign you into Yahoo! Messenger (you also have the option of staying invisible). IM conversations occur in separate tabs within your Mail page.

In Yahoo! Mail Classic, you’ll see a module on the left hand side of the page labeled “Chat & Mobile Text”. Click on the status menu in that module to change to “Available” (or Invisible). IM conversations will show up in a small box in the lower right corner of your Yahoo! Mail Classic page (but it won’t interfere with your Mail messages or using Mail).

As an alternative, there are also solutions available for your mobile phone. We recently launched Yahoo! Messenger for the iPhone and additionals versions are available for other mobile handsets. Find out more

And remember, no matter what version you migrate to, your contact list always goes with you. As the date gets closer, we’ll remind you again here on the blog and provide the final date for retirement.

Thanks,

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

Contact list view
When you signed into 9.0 for the first time, you probably noticed the changes in your contact list right away. This is the new “detailed” view of the contact list which shows a larger display image, status message and latest update from each contacts. If you prefer the older look of the contact list, just click the menu to the right of the contact search box and select “Compact List”. Similarly, you can click on the Contacts menu at the top of your main Messenger window to find these options.

Conversation / message formatting
In the IM conversation window, we switched to a format where the first message is on the same line as the name, and then subsequent messages are shown without names alongside. If you prefer to have your friend’s name next to every message they send in the conversation, there is a keyboard shortcut you can use to change it back to the old style. Click here for instructions on how to change your message format

Status menu makeover
We made a few changes to let you more easily share what you’re up to, what you’re into or what you’re thinking with your friends. One of the problems we wanted to address was being able to show you’re available or busy but still be able to share something with your friends like a website, video or funny thought. With this new status menu, you can indicate whether you’re busy or available and separately, provide a status message and even link to something interesting. Yes, the “canned” status messages are gone, but the last nine status messages you used will be listed in the dropdown menu.
Click here for more details on the new status message menu

New skins
We added eleven new skins to 9.0. To switch skin designs, click the gold dot to the left of the minimize/maximize/close buttons in the upper right corner of the main Messenger window.

Updates from your friends
Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 now displays updates from your contacts alongside their status messages when they make updates on the Yahoo! network at places like Yahoo! Movies, Sports, Shopping, Travel, or on other social websites like Twitter, YouTube, Last.fm, and more. The same goes for you - you can instantly share your own updates with your friends on Yahoo! Messenger.
Click here for more details on Updates in Yahoo! Messenger 9.0

Want to find out more about our latest version? Click here to read more blog articles about Yahoo! Messenger 9.0.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

In Yahoo!’s new Make It Green initiative, we want to turn great ideas that improve lives and help our planet into actual products. We’re looking for the best green do-it-yourself ideas — and we need you to help us.

Submit your idea, and if it’s chosen, you could see your product on store shelves, get $2,500 and a share of the sales, and possibly appear on the Everyday Edisons TV show. Note that there is a $10 entry fee.

Need some inspiration? Dress up your Avatar in new Make It Green gear or use the Avatar Makeover plug-in to dress up your Messenger friends. Maybe together you can dream up your green idea over IM and have it turned into an actual product.

And if you’re stumped for ideas, that’s ok. We need people to vote on ideas too! Take a few moments to browse the submissions in the Make It Green Idea Gallery. Be sure to give a thumbs up to the ones you think are the best.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

Download Yahoo! Messenger for Mac Beta 3.0

Thanks for your patience while we worked out the bugs.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager