Yahoo Messenger is finally shutting down after 20 years

RIP Yahoo Messenger 
Yahoo Messenger follows the same fate as AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger
Dominic Lipinski/PA Archive/PA Images
Amelia Heathman12 June 2018

Yahoo Messenger has announced it is shutting down on 17 July 2018 after 20 years in action.

“We know we have many loyal fans who have used Yahoo Messenger since its beginning as one of the first apps of its kind,” said Yahoo’s parent company, Oath.

But these loyal fans weren’t enough to keep the platform going after so many years.

Instant message applications were regarded as truly revolutionary 20 years ago. From the “ping” option in Yahoo Messenger to notify someone, to the “warning” lightning bolt you could send someone on AOL Instant Messenger if they were annoying you, these platforms taught us how to communicate on the internet.

But, with the rise of platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Slack and WeChat, there isn’t as much use for the originals anymore. For example, over one billion people use WhatsApp every day now.

The writing has been on the wall for Yahoo Messenger for a while. Oath shut down AOL’s IM platform last year after 20 years in action.

As well, its major rival, MSN Messenger, which launched two years later, was finally shut down by Microsoft in 2014.

However, Oath says this isn’t the end of messenger at Yahoo. It is currently working on “new, exciting communication tools” for the 21st-century consumer, namely a new platform called Squirrel.

“We’re currently experimenting with new services and apps, one of which is an invite-only group messaging app called Yahoo Squirrel (currently in beta),” said Oath.

Yahoo started testing Squirrel last month and if you’re interested you can request access to the beta.

Oath is launching a new messaging platform, named Squirrel
Oath

If you’re still using Yahoo, your Yahoo ID will still work for applications such as Yahoo Mail, following the shutdown of Messenger.

But really, the most surprising thing is that people are still using Yahoo’s products such as Messenger and Mail.

In 2013, the company suffered one of the biggest hacks ever, though this information wasn’t revealed until 2016. At the time, Yahoo said the stolen data may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of births and hashed passwords.

Initially, Yahoo said around one billion accounts were affected in the data breach, though this was later chalked up to three billion, which means every single email account at Yahoo was compromised.

The security breach knocked $350 million off the sale price of the company to Verizon.

There are benefits to keeping up with Yahoo’s next Messenger platform, though, it’s not owned by Facebook for a start, unlike Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

With all the problems Facebook has faced this year regarding the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, more and more people are considering leaving social media according to research by the virtual private network (VPN) comparison site, Top10VPN.com

Around 52 per cent of people surveyed said they trust Facebook less than they did last year, following the CA scandal.

As a result, Yahoo Squirrel could have a positive future as the non-Facebook messenger platform.

We’ll have to wait and see.

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