Revamped Yahoo Messenger Adds Unsend Feature

In an effort to bring their venerable instant messaging service back into popularity, Yahoo has revealed a new version of their Yahoo Messenger app. This revamp brings a bevy of new features of the service, most notably introducing the ability for users to access up to a year’s worth of instant messaging conversations and delete any message they sent from the inbox of both users.

The ability to unsend instant messages is made possible with Yahoo’s shift to storing IM conversations in the cloud. This both allows new functionality such as the unsend, but also saves storage space on client devices, as embedded images and attachments will be links to private web resources instead of on device. In contrast to the delete ability, also included is the social-media-esque ‘like’ function, where in both 1:1 and group chats, it is possible to ‘like’ another user’s message or image.

The changes also take advantage of Tumblr’s image handling power (which is owned by Yahoo) in order to shift away from the emoji and towards the more traditional animated gif image, which could be experiencing a revival in recent times. As well as this, Messenger also integrates a smart contacts feature, similar to the one in Yahoo Mail, powered by Xobni’s platform which is able to understand the relationship between your contacts for ease of creation for groups. They even found time to add offline features, where any messages you send while offline or suffering poor connection will be sent once connectivity is resumed.

With all of these new features added to the classic messenger, will they see you going back to the service? Or do you already find all of your IM needs elsewhere now? Let is know in the comments which IM platforms you prefer and if you’re willing to go back to Yahoo now.