The ages old dearie of the social networking world Yahoo Messenger is finally going to shut shop today on the 17th of July. The platform which had opened the eyes of the world to a new pastime is finally going to bow out after facing stiff competition from Whatsapp and other social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. Yahoo messenger was launched on March 9th, 1998 as Yahoo Pager. It underwent a renaming and rebranding process and became known as the Yahoo Messenger. Yahoo Messenger had probably been the largest internet chatroom service in the globe at a time. When at its peak, Yahoo Messenger had more than 122 million registered users back in 2009, but after that it started bleeding customers owing to the surge of social media websites like Orkut. Yahoo Messenger today joins the ranks of popular chatting websites such as MSN Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger both of which shut shop in 2014 and 2017 respectively.
The end of Yahoo Messenger is the end of an era which triggered off the internet friendship and chatting services. Yahoo Messenger had ridden the wave of internet boom and had been one of the most profitable business ventures back in the day. The chat rooms of the Yahoo Messenger had been an instant hit and had found takers across all corners of the globe. Internet friendships the ones which we talk about and hear everyday today had started with Yahoo Messenger. When it shut shops today we need to give Yahoo credit for making a product which was a trendsetter in its own right. Yes, the fact that it did not change with time and could not accommodate with the growing demands of the public too should be taken into consideration, but all those things can wait. To its credit, working on an internet connection which barely reached to kbps was an uphill task and still Yahoo Messenger delivered us the joy of getting a message from an ‘online’ friend on the other side of the globe. It was truly the first contact of the internet generation to the new online world. The demise of the Yahoo Messenger was slow, it was forgotten by the ones who cherished it at a time when there was no other alternative. Yahoo itself is to blame for not aspiring to meet the demands of the millennial generation when it came to social networking.
If you had ever suffered from what passed off for the internet from 2000 till approximately 2010, you would know the joy that you got upon exchanging pleasantries over the Yahoo Messenger. Photos which took forever to send and receive and chats with anonymous people from around the globe. Sigh! Was the internet really a better place back in the day or were we more gullible? Whatever it was, the Messenger will always occupy a special place in our hearts. No, it was not the best and yes it had its own drawbacks. Nevertheless, it still amazed us and made us feel super special back in the day when social media friendships still mattered. Thank you, Yahoo.