UPDATED: Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone

Last week, Yahoo! Messenger product manager Sarah Bacon put her foot in her mouth when she complained on the Y! Messenger blog that Apple was taking so long to approve their updated Yahoo! Messenger iPhone app. Somehow she missed the fact that the app has been resubmitted with some changes, resetting the review period. Nevermind that she’s a product manager and should know this. It’s a moot point now that the updated app has been approved and ready to download from the iTunes app store.

Yahoo! Messenger 1..2.2 for the iPhone incorporates several changes based on your feedback:

• Stay available, not idle. Now when you close the Yahoo! Messenger app, you’ll still show as “available” to your Yahoo contacts rather than “idle.”  Since you get push notifications of new chat messages, this is more logical.
• Get a better Buzz. No, not that kind of buzz. They’ve tweaked the Buzz feature with a new notification sound, the ability to turn it on or off, and added vibrating buzz notifcations.
• “Shorter and prettier” notification sound. – Apparently this was a big problem for a lot of people, based on feedback. Go figure.
• Address book integration fixed. Yeah, they broke it in the last version. Now it works properly again, so when you compose a new SMS to someone, you can access numbers in your iPhone address book, and not just your Yahoo contact list.

Resources

• Read more about the update from the Yahoo! Messenger blog
• Join the discussion in our Yahoo Support forum

Yahoo! Mobile Now Available

Yesterday at the CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas, Yahoo! announced the availability of Yahoo! Mobile supporting over 300 devices, and provided a sneak peek at Yahoo! Messenger for the iPhone.

Yahoo! Mobile comes in two basic flavors, an application (available for iPhone, Windows Mobile and a few others) and a web-based mobile version for everyone else. They share a similar look, and do a pretty amazing job of integrating services from a wide range of popular choices. News, email (including Gmail), instant messaging, social networks — they are all available. 

In related news… Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone

Announced yesterday–but not yet available for download–was Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone. This is somewhat curious, as Yahoo! Mobile (including the iPhone version) and Yahoo! oneConnect (which is also available for the iPhone) already support Yahoo! Messenger. So with this “new” product, you now have three ways from Yahoo! to connect to Yahoo! Messenger. And that’s not even considering all the third-party options (Nimbuzz, Beejive, Palringo, etc.). 

Granted, Yahoo! Messenger for the iPhone is more full-featured, but the multiple products still leaves me wondering if they have a cohesive plan for all these products. Check out the video demo:

http://www.vimeo.com/3951867

Useful Links and Other Opinions

• Yahoo! Mobile – official site
• Sneak peek: Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone – Yahoo! Messenger Blog
• Yahoo! Mobile for Web Launches Across More Than 300 Devices Around the World – Press Release
• Yahoo Gets It Right: New Mobile Website, iPhone App Launch – Search Engine Land
• Yahoo Takes Mobile, Messenger to iPhone – PC World
• Yahoo Rolls Out iPhone App at CTIA Wireless – eWeek