Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Yahoo brings two services into an integrated communications package. Yahoo Mail beta users should start to see the Messenger functionality first discussed in November 2006.
Love, exciting and new
Come aboard, we’re expecting you…
80’s Saturday night TV programming was so much simpler than Cops. It was all about bringing people together. The Mail team at Yahoo have embarked on the same mission, but they probably don’t have the same styling dress code as Captain Stubing.
The combination of Yahoo Messenger and Mail will be rolled out gradually. If an active chat icon does not show up next to the username when logged in to Yahoo Mail beta, the integration has not been extended to that account.
Instant messages will open new tabs in Yahoo Mail. Emails can be converted to IM sessions on the fly when people come online. If someone leaves the conversation, the IM session can be flipped to email and sent.
Once it is in place, Yahoo Mail beta users will have a lot of ways to organize and communicate at their fingertips. Yahoo Mail has Contacts, RSS feedreading, Notepad, and the Yahoo Calendar available within the interface.
Add Messenger to the mix, and there are plenty of reasons to keep Yahoo Mail beta open all the time on the desktop. Yahoo Mail evangelist Ryan Kennedy said in the blog post that Messenger has 73 million users, citing comScore numbers.
That’s a lot of people who will be potentially using Messenger from within Mail. It explains why they have embarked on the gradual rollout.
Yahoo is promoting the new lovefest of communication services as a ‘true Web 2.0 experience.’ “Yahoo! is focused on making it easier for people to connect to those who matter most to them,” said Yahoo! Mail vice president John Kremer.
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