Yahoo Ups Beta Ante with New Additions to IM Client

Yahoo Messenger 9.0 beta is getting refreshed before its final release. This time around Yahoo has beefed up Yahoo Messenger features such as contact lists, status messages, and has made it a lot easier to import contacts from outside programs and services. Yahoo also says along with new features it has worked hard to fix bugs, improve the software's stability, and has made the Messenger faster when executing commands.

It's a solid update, not huge, but I did find Yahoo did fix a lot of nagging beta bugs found in earlier versions of the Yahoo Messenger 9.0 beta IM client. In my opinion this update makes Yahoo Messenger 9.0 beta stable enough for everyday use. You can download a copy here.

For a complete list of Yahoo Messenger 9.0 beta features check with Yahoo here.

Here's a brief overview of recently added Yahoo Messenger 9.0 beta improvements.

Contacts

With Yahoo Messenger 9.0 you've always been able to view your list of contacts. But now Yahoo adds a button to the right of the Messenger search bar that lets you quickly switch in between a compact or expandable view. The detailed view will show the various activities your IM buddies are up to. If they've changed their avatar or sent you a news story that will show up to the side of the buddy in your contact list.\

Yahoo also improved the contact importing feature, which grabs your contacts from Outlook, AOL, Hotmail/MSN, Gmail, and MySpace.

Other Improvements

Users of Yahoo Messenger 9.0 beta can now play games again, a feature that was apparently missing from earlier beta iterations. Games are located under the new "Activities" button. Your friends must have the newest version of the 9.0 beta software or the earlier finished version of Yahoo! Messenger 8.1 to play games together.

Message notification pop-ups have also been included in the latest update so that if you switch to a different program window, your incoming messages will appear in the lower right hand corner of your screen.

Finally, Windows Vista users can now use the voice chat feature inside Yahoo Messenger's chat rooms - something that's apparently been missing for a while.

Needs More Openness

Still, even with this Yahoo Messenger update, no improvement is seen when it comes to cross-platform support. As it stands Yahoo does allow you to swap messages with users of Windows Live Messenger and two other relatively obscure instant messaging platforms (Reuters Messaging and Lotus Sametime).

I say let's make things interesting by opening everything up and letting the best instant messaging software win. Until then, check out Trillian and Pidgin as some solid cross-platform options.

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