Sunnyvale, California — In a surprising turn of events, the global Internet pioneer Yahoo has decided to discontinue several product features such as its Messenger public chat rooms, and will no longer support Messenger’s interoperability with Microsoft Windows Live, Pingbox effective December 14 and will not be offering Yahoo! Voice Phone In and Phone Out services by January 30th, 2013.
The instant messaging client is set to lose interoperability with Windows Live Messenger, along with its Chat Rooms, Pingbox and paid-for VoIP features, in a bid to free up its resources for developing new features. It said in a blog post it would replace the tool, along with other services being removed, with new features.
Most of the doomed features — namely Public chat rooms which were topic-based or region-based will stop functioning from December 14. “In order to focus on providing great new features for Yahoo! Messenger, we are discontinuing some Messenger services, including our public chat rooms on December 14. We know that some long-term Yahoo! Messenger users still enjoy these topic-based communities, however we feel that by embracing the modern technologies and platforms available today, Yahoo! will uncover better ways to foster meaningful communities and connections with the people you care about,” said Yahoo on its Messenger help page.
However, the chat-rooms tool came under fire in 2005, with advertisers pulling ads after reports of illegal under-age sex-themed rooms. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said the feature was ditched because it was not “adding enough value” for users.
Yahoo is closing some features on its Messenger service. Image Credit: (CNET)
“Here at Yahoo!, we strive to make the world’s daily habits inspiring and entertaining. More than ever, we are focused on developing products that are beautiful and meaningful for our users. Sometimes, this means we have to make tough decisions — like closing down features that we feel are not adding enough value for you,” Yahoo said in a web post.
Besides, Pingbox is a feature that let users interact privately with visitors on their social networks, blogs, etc., using the users Yahoo Messenger profile. This service will get the axe as well on December 14. Users using the service can uninstall it using these steps.
“This helps us spend more energy on creating experiences that make Yahoo the most fun way to spend your time.” “With this in mind, we have concluded to discontinue several Yahoo! product features. This will enable us to refocus our efforts on modernizing our core Yahoo! products experiences and of course, create new ones,” the company said.