Punk isn’t dead, neither is Yahoo.
Yahoo launched earlier this month a brand new mobile messaging app for iOS – it debuted on the Hong Kong iTunes App Store. You can find it by searching Yahoo Livetext – Video Messenger.
Yahoo is trying to rekindle a lost flame. With Facebook and its messenger app gaining a lot of popularity in the past couple of years; fine, all of the popularity, Yahoo is now trying to sway some users to their side.
In order to do so, Yahoo needs to bring something new to the table. It’s hard to compete with the behemoth status that Facebook has acquired, and the younger, but with a lot to prove, WhatsApp.
The new mobile messaging app sticks to the high-quality standard that Facebook introduced, and it adds a couple of new, really welcomed, features like an unique way to send video messages – but without audio. Basically, they are gifs.
This old, but new way of communicating with your friends adds the human factor, and makes the experience more enjoyable, some even might say unique. TechCrunch tried to contact Yahoo regarding their new mobile messaging app, but they got a standard reply – ” We’re always experimenting with new product experiences that delight our users. We have nothing further to share at this time.”
As far as we know, this isn’t the first, and it may not be the last form of the company’s video messaging app. The California-based company has been working on this little project for several years, and it has scraped a lot of finished apps. We might just be witnessing a passing-by app.
Seeing that the app has debuted on the Hong Kong App Store, we might be inclined to think that it’s here to stay, but don’t get your hopes high. We’re talking about Yahoo here.
But this isn’t to say that Yahoo isn’t improving each year – the company has been searching for talents across the world to join their teams, and at this point, they have bolstered their squadrons immensely. The only thing that stands as a challenge now is how they implement their strategies.
Subsequently, the company has removed their older Yahoo app from the store, and a Yahoo spokesperson noted on their Yahoo Answers forum that – ” The Messenger app was removed from the appstore as it has not been updated in quite a long time. We would rather our name be related to fully functional new technology, instead of old and outdated apps. Look for an announcement from us about a new Messenger client coming soon. “
Their new app is targeted to a younger demo, clearly – just look at the demo that FaceTime tries to please. Unlikely that Yahoo will be a prime competitor for FaceTime, Skype, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or Viber.
Michael Turner
