Yahoo Messenger is back as an image-centric messaging app

Those of you still using the older web-based version of Yahoo Messenger will be sad to hear that Yahoo will be ending support for the service in a few months, but the good news is that a new, revamped version of the service has launched, and it actually looks pretty enticing. Naturally, the new Yahoo Messenger is very similar to other messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, but what makes the Yahoo Messenger app so appealing is the integration with other Yahoo services. The app comes with built-in GIF search thanks to Tumblr, as well as the ability to quickly send large numbers of photos thanks to Flickr. 

Remember Yahoo Messenger, the company’s instant messaging client that was popular in the late ’90s and early 2000s? Yahoo is now breathing new life into Yahoo Messenger with a set of new messaging apps. The older web-based Yahoo Messenger will continue to be supported for the next couple months but will eventually be retired, the company says. On the surface, the new Yahoo Messenger app is similar to WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other messaging apps: Log in with your phone number (or your Yahoo Mail account, if you have one) and the app scans your contacts for people you know who also use the app. (If you used the legacy version of Yahoo Messenger or have a connected Yahoo Mail account, your contacts from those services will also appear.) But the revamped Yahoo Messenger does have a few tricks of its own, including built-in GIF search (via Tumblr) and the ability to share large numbers of photos almost instantly, regardless of whether you’re on Wi-Fi or a data connection (via Flickr.) You can also like individual messages within a thread or unsend a message you’ve sent at any time.