By Stefanie Olsen, 13 January 2004 09:00
NEWS Yahoo! is gauging demand for new instant messaging features that would allow people to listen to music while chatting, or manage a single address book from IM.
In the past week, Yahoo! started issuing surveys to select visitors of its web network, questioning them on their preferences for potential features on Yahoo! Messenger, the company's popular instant chat application.
Fresh features could include games, friend icons, avatars, or stealth-mode capabilities within Yahoo! Messenger, according to the survey. Another enhancement includes letting IM users listen to music from the application and share information about their music tastes.
"You can create and listen to your own personalised music channel and your friends can see the artist and the song you are listening to in your online status message," according to the survey, which described features that Yahoo! is considering.
Yahoo! has a long legacy in floating research surveys to visitors, and they can often be a barometer of where the company is headed in new services. In 2002, Yahoo! sought visitors' advice before it introduced a subscription-based streaming-media service, Yahoo! Platinum, which it later closed. That survey asked consumers how willing they would be to pay for such a service.
Stefanie Olsen writes for News.com
Comments
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1. anonymous
I love the smiley's yahoo has but whats an emotion without sound? I was thinking maybe it'd be pretty cool to have sounds for each smiley if possible, u can choose to turn the sound on or off.
2. anonymous
I think being able to share music is a kewl idea.
Being able to display different smileys than what messenger comes with is a great idea expecially since alot of people make their own now. I wish it had that feature now.
Tabed idea is a must! I would be great if only one window is used and there were tabs at the top that had each persons name and the tabs flashed when the person imed you back. And be able to have separate settings for each person. It would make chatting to multiple people so much easier!!!
3. Justifiedbyfaith32
I would love for yahoo to add a feature like AIM has.. Buddy Block.. You don't have to actually delete the person you just put them on block and when you are done, if you'd like to talk to that person again you can unblock them without having to re-add them.
4. anonymous
since I am a techie, I want yahoo messenger to have features that will intelligently reply based on the keyword .. for example time(yahooid) it shud tell me the time zone i am in and lots of other keywords which can be used.