Yahoo today announced a new version of its Messenger app. Available on Android, iOS, as well as on the web and through the company’s desktop email client, the app has been completely rebuilt by the company’s developers, and features a new design.
Yahoo hopes to differentiate its chat app with a couple of specific features. Thanks to Flickr integration, the app is able to send and receive hundreds of photos at a time. According to the company, these photos will load almost instantaneously, and users are able to download a copy of any one of the photos sent to them at its original quality.
Taking a cue from several other chat apps, one of the new features Yahoo is touting with Messenger is the ability to “like” and unsend messages. The like functionality is well-treaded ground at this point. If someone sends you a message you think is funny, witty or poignant, hit the like button and the person will know they did good. The unsend functionality is more interesting. Users can also click the unsend button to remove a message from conversations. The company hopes this feature will allow Messenger to fall in a middle ground between more permanent messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and ephemeral ones like Snapchat.
Lastly, thanks to functionality anyone who has used Slack’s Giphy integration will appreciate, it’s possible to pull from Tumblr’s extensive GIF library to send a message. Good stuff.
In relaunching Messenger, Yahoo says its goal is to integrate the best of some of the other platforms it has added to its portfolio over the past couple of years.
The new version of Yahoo Messenger is rolling out across the world, including Canada, starting today. We’ll add Store links once they’re live.
