End Of An Era: After 20 Years, Yahoo Messenger Announce Its Finally Shutting Down

Posted by Odinaka on Wed 13th Jun, 2018 - tori.ng

Instant messaging app, Yahoo Messenger is shutting down after 20 years of operation, taking it out of competition against the more popular ones like WhatsApp, Telegram and Facebook Messenger.

Yahoo Messenger, the messaging app that many people probably didn't know still existed, is finally shutting down for good, according to Business Insider.

The app is shutting down on July 17, after a 20-year run. Yahoo, which was acquired by Verizon in 2017, didn't give an explanation for shutting its messenger down, but given the sheer amount of already popular messaging apps on the market, it was probably hard to compete with the existing product.

Yahoo is currently beta testing an invite-only messaging app called Squirrel, which could serve as a replacement for those who will miss Messenger.

However, since Squirell's release last month, it has been downloaded fewer than 5,000 times, compared to the nearly half-million downloads of Yahoo Messenger during the last quarter, according to Randy Nelson, the head of mobile insights at Sensor Tower.

"We know we have many loyal fans who have used Yahoo Messenger since its beginning as one of the first chat apps of its kind," Yahoo wrote in a press release.

"As the communications landscape continues to change over, we're focusing on building and introducing new, exciting communications tools that better fit consumer needs.

“There currently isn’t a replacement product available for Yahoo Messenger,” the company writes. “We’re constantly experimenting with new services and apps, one of which is an invite-only group messaging app called Yahoo Squirrel (currently in beta).”

Squirrel is a group messaging app Yahoo started testing last month.

Yahoo Messenger was one of the first instant messaging apps created, but it struggled to keep up with modern apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Snapchat.