Yahoo launches Together, formerly Squirrel in beta, a group messaging app that lets groups organize chats by topics
Context & Ripple Effects
Yahoo has been rebuilding its messaging presence from scratch since it shut down Yahoo Messenger in July 2018, ending a run that dated to Yahoo Pager in 1998. The quiet May release of an invite-only group chat app called Squirrel was the first sign of a successor, and today's beta launch of Together — same topic-room structure, new name — turns that experiment into a public product.
The move echoes Yahoo's earlier attempt to relaunch messaging around new formats, including the 2015 Messenger revamp with group messaging and unsend and the reported plan to combine live and recorded video with text. Together suggests the company concluded patching Messenger wasn't enough and opted for a clean-slate app instead.
First-order effects
- Early Squirrel users move from an invite-only test to a public beta under the Together name, with groups organizing conversations into topic-specific rooms rather than one flat thread.
- Together now occupies the consumer messaging slot Yahoo vacated when Messenger shut down, giving the company a live product again in a category it had exited.
Second-order effects
- Users who lived through the Messenger shutdown face a trust question before committing their groups to another Yahoo messaging app, so adoption likely leans on the topic-room format differentiating itself rather than brand loyalty.
- A public beta puts pressure on Yahoo to show staying power — a second rapid sunset would make future messaging experiments a hard sell to both users and press.
Third-order effects
- If the Squirrel-to-Together pattern holds, Yahoo's model for consumer apps becomes launch-small-in-beta, rename-on-traction, and retire-quickly — a standing incubation loop replacing long-lived flagship products like Messenger's two-decade run.
The trend: Legacy web portals are treating messaging as a rotating portfolio of experimental betas rather than a single long-lived product, with Yahoo cycling from Messenger's shutdown to Squirrel to Together within months.