By Jeff Bonforte, SVP of Product & Engineering for Communication Products

We’re unveiling the next generation of the venerable Yahoo Messenger, which offers a vibrant new messaging experience, built from the ground up. The powerful new platform integrates the best of the Flickr, Tumblr and Xobni platforms – built to serve you, for years to come.

The new Yahoo Messenger was created with group messaging in mind from the start. We’ve made sharing, “unsending” and “liking” messages, photos and animated GIFs easy and insanely fast – unlike anything you’ve experienced before.

The new Yahoo Messenger is available globally today on iOS, Android, on the Web and in Yahoo Mail on the desktop. It has a few superpowers that we think you’ll love once you try them. Let’s jump into the details.

Photos, Photos, Photos

Drawing from Flickr’s expertise, the new Yahoo Messenger really takes the beauty of sharing photos to a whole new level. You can literally send hundreds of photos at a time and they appear to everyone in the conversation almost instantly.

Not only is the quality of the photos amazing when viewing on Yahoo Messenger, but you can download the original in full quality. And you don’t need to worry about limited photo storage, because the app loads images just as (actually, just before) you need them. It’s like magic.

Love It or Unsend It

Today’s messaging services are either ephemeral or permanent. The new Yahoo Messenger is both. You can “unsend” any message, photo or GIF, and it will vanish instantly from the conversation (not only from your view but everyone else’s too). Poof!

Of course, at the other side of the spectrum is love. Show some love with a “like” on any comment, photo or GIF. Unsend and “like” are not only good for 1:1 conversations, but they are also invaluable for groups. For example, at Yahoo, when we’re deciding where to meet for lunch, people throw out options on Yahoo Messenger and the group votes on their favorite using “like.”

GIFs Are The New Emoji

Before emojis there was that awkward moment in messaging where you were unsure what the other person really meant. Then came emojis, which helped you to express yourself. But why limit your reaction to an emoji? Everyone loves a GIF!

Now you can search and find the perfect GIF in the new Yahoo Messenger app. Get instant access to a virtually unlimited and ever-growing library of GIFs pulled from the Tumblr community, where tomorrow’s most popular GIFs are born each day.

Smart Contacts

Like Yahoo Mail, the new Yahoo Messenger has a brilliant smart contacts system behind the scene, powered by Xobni’s industry-defining platform. This is critical, because even more than email, messaging is all about the “who” in your life.

For example, our smart contacts system doesn’t just understand who you know, it also understands the relationship between your contacts, so adding people to the group is really fast and simple. Also, anyone in a group can add another participant, change the name of the group or even change the group photo.

Really Fast…Seriously

Speed with communications is critical and the new Yahoo Messenger sets the bar in speed. In an area like photo sharing, it is almost inconceivably fast. Syncing conversations between Yahoo Messenger on the Web, in Yahoo Mail and your smartphone happens almost in real-time.

And if you’re offline or have low connectivity (say when you’re flying or in a remote area), you can continue to use the app and send messages or photos. When you’re connected, Yahoo Messenger automatically sends them through without you having to resend or refresh.

And More To Come

Today’s launch is just the beginning. We’re going to continue to work hard to build the best messaging product that you won’t be able to live without!

Give it a try and let us know what you think. Still using our old Yahoo Messenger? Read more here.