Can of worms and viruses (Yahoo! Messenger)

Member Name: kamal

Product:	Yahoo! Messenger
Date:	21/01/09 (27 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very rich past, easy to install and use, Large user base.

Disadvantages: Spam, Viruses, poor voice and video chat

Many users have given lot of details about Yahoo messenger, so I am not going to repeat it. I just want to share my experience and opinion on this software.

I was bit late to join online bandwagon, around 1998. So I did not get a chance to use AOL or ICQ and ended up using Yahoo Messenger.

It was known as Yahoo Pager that time, and it is now synonym for chatting online. When they added webcam features, It became ultimate chatting software. I used Yahoo most of the time after briefly experimenting with other s/w like MSN, ICQ, AOL etc.

After the great legacy, then came the fall. Yahoo could not keep up with the demand and service started deterioting. It is almost impossible to do voice chat and webcam is always jerkey and freezes quite often. The overall experience of using yahoo messenger became synonym with frustration.

They also started loosing focus on their primary aim - Chat, WebCam and AudioChat... They started offering funny emoticons, Yahoo environments and stupid plug-ins. and that gave a rise to spam and virus threats..

Then came the final nail to the coffin of Yahoo IM... Arrival of the SKYPE. Since SKPY improved their reliability and quality and also offered their LINUX version, I stopped using yahoo and started using SKYPE.

I still use yahoo once a week as most of my friends are still stuck to yahoo. But I don't use it anymore for active chatting.

The only feature I still like in Yahoo is their Photo Sharing, which does not kill internet by sending original file, and sends resized photos instead. Very easy and quick way to share photos online.

Bye Bye Yahoo IM.. It was fun to use - back in 1999..

Summary: It was great in the past, but failed to keep up with the present.

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