Yahoo! Messenger may not be as commonly used as other instant messaging services, but it nonetheless offers users a wide range of excellent service and great features. As it is fully integrated with Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger requires the user to have a Yahoo! account. This is not only very easy to set up: it is also completely free. Once you have your Yahoo! account, the service imports all your contacts from your email account. It can also import contacts from a variety of other email services. Another advantage of the integration between Yahoo! Messenger and the email service is that you receive a notification each time you get a new email, so you won’t miss a thing. You can even get social network notifications.
The buddy list is really easy to use, listing both online and offline contacts. You need only to click on whatever contact you want to communicate with and you are ready to send instant messages. It is also easy to add new contacts. You just need to add their email address or Yahoo ID, or use the search option. Video chat is also available on Yahoo! Messenger, and the video and audio quality is very good.
But perhaps what really makes Yahoo! Messenger stand apart from its competitors is the wide range of plugins available: Weather, Music, Finance, Calendar, Radio, and much more. These can be very helpful and enhance the user’s experience of a great instant messaging client.