Starting from June 17, one of the first messaging apps in the market will no longer be available as the company will be experimenting on how to be relevant in a place dominated by big social media companies like Facebook.
Loyal fans who were there since the beginning may still download their chat history for the next 6 months.
As of now, the company has been testing the replacement for Yahoo Messenger since last month which they call Squirrel that is currently in Beta. You can request an invite at squirrel.yahoo.com.
Yahoo has not stated the specific reason for discontinuing the Messenger after its 20 years of service. They said, “As the communications landscape continues to change over, we’re focusing on building and introducing new, exciting communications tools that better fit consumer needs.”
Way back in 1998, Yahoo Messenger made its debut as Yahoo Pager which became an instant hit with an idea of messaging that was not tied to the network provider. But it didn’t stay that way as other messaging apps like Notably, Whatsapp created by former employees of the company started to compete.
We’ll see if the Yahoo Squirrel will be able to go up against the messaging app giants.
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