As much as I love the Yahoo community as a whole, Yahoo Messenger was a bit of a let down for me. I have it installed but seldom use it.
Yahoo Instant Messenger allows you to exchange messages and chat with your online friends. The messages go through instantly, and you can chat in real time.
Some features of it are:
Voice Chat
Various Fonts and Effects
Several cute smiley faces!
Stock alerts
Notification of new Yahoo mail
News, Weather, and Sports Scores
With all of the features Yahoo offers with it’s Instant Messenger, I still do not like it. Why?
It is impossible to block messages from people you do not wish to communicate with. Anyone who knows your Yahoo ID may message you. Each time I have had my messenger on, I get spam messages for pornography sites, requests for cyber sex, and just general wierdos wishing to chat with me! After they have messaged you, you can block them, but there is no way to stop them from coming in the first place.
You can go into invisible mode, so that no one can see you are online. However, that also means that friends you may wish to chat with cannot see that you are online either.
When you receive a message on Yahoo IM, it automatically pops up in the middle of your screen, no matter what you are doing. This can be quite annoying, especially when you are working.
Yahoo is also known to be very glitchy. About half the time I try to log on, I get a message stating that I am behind a firewall, but if I reboot I am able to connect. Several times I have left offline messages for friends, and later found out that never received them. I have also found several programs that I use often that are simply not compatible with Yahoo, causing my computer to shut down. IM has also caused my computer to freeze up numerous times.
If you don’t mind receiving random chat requests and messages from strangers, then go ahead and download it. Personally, I prefer ICQ. ICQ has many more message features available to cut down on unwanted messages.