Марко Кажић

Last November a lot of Yahoo! users were very excited about the new Yahoo! Messenger 10 release. Some of us that had an opportunity to try and use the Beta version, however, had only one question in mind. Has Yahoo! abandoned us?
Since the early beta stage Yahoo! tried to create an atmosphere of revolution amongst the users, showing the all “new” features as something exclusive and yet unseen. Yahoo! Messenger 10 finally includes support for more languages, a total of 16 languages officially supported. Let me just remind you that Windows Live Messenger 2009 (Wave 3) supports 48 languages. Doesn’t make it such a revolution anymore, ah? Well, the incredible Yahoo! Messenger team has been working hard to provide a nice Chinese translation in both Simplified and Traditional version, but didn’t include a Romanian translation. Why is this odd? If you’re in China you’re mostly using QQ (Tencent Messenger) and if you’re in Romania, you’ll probably be using, guess what? Yahoo! Messenger. Now QQ’s share of users in China takes about 75% which is probably the same per cent of users that Yahoo! Messenger has in Romania. Besides that, there’s no official way (nor an usable unofficial one for that matter) to create your own translation for the Y! Messenger.

So, even a hypothetical noble enthusiast willing to spend some time translating this magnificent revolutionary masterpiece will come to a dead end. No, you just can’t do that. Why? Because there are 16 languages, more than enough for everyone.

If you’re a Windows 7 user, you’ll be glad to know this version is compatible with the new operating system. – Yahoo! Messenger Team Blog

Oh, isn’t that cute? If by “compatible with new operating system” you are referring to “this version will actually run on Windows 7″ then they are not lying. But it seems that they haven’t heard about Aero or jumplists at all. What can I say guys, nice job with the integration with Windows 7. Again, thank you very much for dumping the WPF version for Vista. It actually looked nice for a change. If it were possible, Yahoo Messenger wouldn’t work with Aero Shake either, but hey, we’re waiting for v11.

Wait, what that? No conversation tabs option? I think that’s actually a feature called “NoTabsIM – Your desktop will choke in your IM”. Anyways, why would anyone need tabs in their IM. That’s just silly.

I’m not going to waste words on the social updates integration, it’s purely utterly lame. Social networks included are probably not the best choice for international users, but like the rest of the stuff they missed, Yahoo! Messenger developers didn’t think about this either. Somehow, everything would be fine if it wasn’t April, and since November the team had more than enough time to fix everything and add features in later releases. Still, updates come, no new features bundled.

Finally, there’s the new Video Chat feature(s) and probably the only thing this version has that’s worth something. Hello dear Skype, it’s Yahoo! So, if you want your Yahoo! Skype(d) download the version 10.
The conclusion of this article is: “Everything I expected Y! Messenger doesn’t have and I’m sometimes too ugly to expose myself on a webcam just for the sake of Video chatting.”

P.S. Since I found out that feedbacks are being ignored and that you’re not really listening to comments, I’ll show you this picture. What’s that? Something to look at, go back and start over from. Because you know you’re doing it wrong.