Yahoo Messenger for Windows Gets a Tune-Up with v9.0
Yahoo is releasing version 9.0 of its popular instant messaging software, Yahoo Messenger, for Windows tonight. All in all, the update contains nothing revolutionary but does introduce some useful features.
Context & Ripple Effects
Messenger 9.0 lands in the middle of a busy October for Yahoo: a Wall Street-pleasing earnings report on October 17 gave a slight lift to Mr. Yang's measured revival strategy, the company turned on a redesigned front page on October 25 that opens to outside site links for the first time, and an October 18 report showed Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL all adding social networking features to their web email to counter fast-growing social networks.
Tonight's Windows release fits that cadence — TechCrunch calls it useful rather than revolutionary, which is the point: it keeps a large installed client fresh at low cost while the portal repositions itself as the front door to the Internet. It also touches the same desktop surface that raised eyebrows earlier this year over the client's webcam ActiveX controls.
First-order effects
- Windows users of Yahoo Messenger get the v9.0 update tonight, gaining incremental features rather than any overhaul of how the client works.
- Yahoo gets a refreshed flagship client to anchor its portal strategy just as it pushes the redesigned home page and social-flavored webmail.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft and AOL are running the same play — social networking features bolted onto web email — so each incremental Messenger refresh raises the bar for matching updates across all three portals' communication suites.
- A stickier Messenger gives Yahoo more reasons to route users through its own properties even as the new home page deliberately sends them to outside sites, a tension between openness and retention the company will have to manage.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the big portals' answer to social networks is retrofitting social layers onto existing mail and IM franchises rather than launching standalone networks — defending audience through iteration on owned clients.
- Desktop IM becomes less a growth category than a retention asset inside portal ecosystems, with release cadence serving engagement metrics rather than headline innovation.
The trend: Consumer portals are countering fast-growing social networks by incrementally refreshing their legacy mail and instant messaging clients rather than building new social products.