December 31, 2001

10:29 PM

Yahoo IMvironments are the latest fad that the company's come up with. It makes your chatting easier, prettier and more fun - and a lot more bulky and resource hungry. I don't know how many people here actually use Y!, but my guess is this wont take long to disappear.
posted by arnab (20 comments total)

and oh, since its 12:08PM, Jan 1st here in India, wishing you a very happy new year!!
posted by arnab at 10:32 PM on December 31, 2001

Your clock is off, dude. The minutes on your post read :32. *shrugs*
posted by bloggboy at 10:43 PM on December 31, 2001

That thing doesn't work in the Mac version of Messenger yet.

Besides, I don't see what it is what it does that it may turn it into something really useful. From my practical POV, a waste of time and system resources. Cute, yes, but just that.
posted by betobeto at 10:46 PM on December 31, 2001

Imagine yourself being 10-14 years old, and you might begin to see the appeal. I think you'll find more IM clients gravitating to this type of colobarative chatting environment in the next couple years. I'd be very surprised if they concept disappears.
posted by Neb at 11:21 PM on December 31, 2001

FWIW, I like the comic book theme. But I'm also a nerd, so...
posted by owillis at 11:24 PM on December 31, 2001

ms comic chat anyone?
posted by manero at 11:29 PM on December 31, 2001

That thing doesn't work in the Mac version of Messenger yet.

Same with the Unix version.
posted by sillygwailo at 11:50 PM on December 31, 2001

Oh, w00t.

Right.

And I doubt you'll see it in either of the non-Win platforms, either. Hell, I want it in the Java version...
posted by Samizdata at 12:46 AM on January 1, 2002

And I don't want it in any version. I remember back in the end of november when it first came out. Completely useless. If you are talking to someone and, god forbid, surfing the web at the same time, you are liable to miss a messageor two. There is no easy way to go back to view the history of the chat without turning the thing off.
No easy way to view the history of the chat. No way to go back. Stupid irritating graphic front ends that hog too many resources. Waste of time and cycles.
posted by Apoch at 5:03 AM on January 1, 2002

As I am in the 10-14 age range I do actually find it quite appealing. My friends and I talk alot on Y! often in 4 or 5 way chats and it saves our parents a fortune (off peak) whilst allowing us to gossip so much more affectively.

I guess that for people who are older then us, it probably seems really stupid, but it's a good way for us to talk, especially if we're disscussing some-thing like homework answers question for question and don't want to use an open (or even a closed) chatroom.

It's also safer and gives peace of mind to our (dear) parents as no-one can become your 'friend' unless you agree to it and you can always use the 'ignore button' if things are going badly.

Yahoo Chat is also much better than the other chat systems floating around as every-one has signed up to it because it uses your yahoo ID (which almost every-one I know has.) And becuase it doesn't try to take over your computer in such an evil way *coughs* AIM, MSN *coughs*
posted by hugsnkisses at 5:15 AM on January 1, 2002

bloggboy: Consulting the Customized World Clock site, one can see that some cities (including [New] Delhi) are 15 or 30 minutes apart, not an hour.
posted by Carol Anne at 6:35 AM on January 1, 2002

Hugs, I don't think they were bashing YM as a whole, but only the IMvironment feature. Which is stupid after the first 3 minutes spent playing with it, IMHO. Otherwise yes, I think YM is definitely the best of the major systems (ignoring the bloated IM feature, which I don't use). And I'm, uh, not in the 10-14 age range.
posted by pmurray63 at 8:53 AM on January 1, 2002

Imagine yourself being 10-14 years old, and you might begin to see the appeal.

Right on, Neb. Forgot about that. Yes, those kind of useless-but-cute things begin to make sense when you consider its huge appeal among schoolboys and even teens.

From that point of view, a way on which Yahoo intends to gain market share on that user group, probably. Makes sense when they say your success as a brand lies on injecting your image into the people's subconscious, and the sooner it is done the better. Just ask Disney or McDonalds.
posted by betobeto at 6:05 PM on January 1, 2002

If you want the coolest chat environment check out Habbo Hotel. Using Macromedia Shockwave, its Netbaby meets the Palace. Sure it's not an IM app but it's too damn cool.
posted by Brilliantcrank at 10:04 PM on January 1, 2002

A few weeks ago YIM was offline for several days for a lot of people worldwide. IMVironments were blamed, having so many exploits that servers were taken offline by either Yahoo! or skiddies.

There was no official explanation for the outage. I'd love to see it if there has been one since.
posted by southisup at 11:38 PM on January 1, 2002

I've had all kinds of bugs with Yahoo's Instant Messenger. Back when YIM 5 came out, which is when the "IMvironments" started, I upgraded and found the whole new version annoying. It wanted to open up a pop-up window full of ads every time I started it - there was a preference option to turn that off, which I did, but it kept happening anyway. Sometimes blank message windows would open up to show off the IMvironments - more annoyance. I removed it and went back to version 4. Now everytime I start, it asks if I want to upgrade - I click "NO" and it still starts up Internet Explorer and tries to download the upgrade I just said I didn't want. It also does a lousy job of keeping up with when friends log in and out. I'm trying to get the one or two people I talk to on YIM to switch to AIM so I can drop it altogether.
posted by dnash at 7:41 AM on January 2, 2002

I use jabber myself, a free open standard. For me, one great plus about Yahoo, like MSN is that they have easy, open transports so I can talk to my friends who use them, not like AIM who block jabber users.
posted by nedrichards at 3:10 PM on January 2, 2002

Trillian rocks, IMHO. One service goes down... oh, well. Move on to the next one. Or your best friend is an ICQ junkie and your parents aren't so savvy and went with the default MSN messanger. They're all right there in one client.
posted by Nauip at 4:46 PM on January 2, 2002

I'm 24 and I think it's cute ;-) ...gotta love the rock-scissors-paper game....

I don't use Yahoo! primarily though, only because everyone is on something else. But I do wish that other clients would make the same kind of effort as Yahoo! to make their chat and community services F-U-N.
posted by pinkstar at 7:22 PM on January 3, 2002

I wish they'd make them W-O-R-K, and it wouldn't hurt if they were L-E-A-N, too. F-U-N comes after W-O-R-K, remember?

;)
posted by Ptrin at 10:25 PM on January 3, 2002