UPDATED 22:53 EST / OCTOBER 04 2018

APPS

Yahoo launches new messaging app that channels Slack and ICQ

Yahoo LLC is trying to deal itself back into the messaging market with a new app, which may surprise people who didn’t realize the company still exists in 2018.

The new app, called “Yahoo Together,” is being pitched as a replacement to the Yahoo Messenger app that closed in July. But it appears to be something that takes the look of Slack and combines it with the functionality of the old instant-messaging program ICQ.

“Have you ever been in a group SMS thread with 10 people talking about 18 different things at once? It can make it hard to follow along, let alone plan a barbecue,” Yahoo’s parent company Oath, which itself is a division of Verizon Communications Inc., said in a media release. “We built Yahoo Together to fix that. It’s group chat that makes life easier through organization and smart tools.”

The app offers photo and video sharing, shared calendars and “powerful search [that] helps you find all those easily.”

The comparison to Slack comes from The Verge, which wrote, “Take one look at Yahoo Together and its similarity to Slack is unmistakable … from their general user experience to their color scheme to the custom reactions you can add below messages, these two apps look almost identical.”

Engadget was the only site to write nice things about the app, claiming that Yahoo’s new entry promises a more organized experience than other apps. “Together allows you to group conversations and slap an appropriate titled on each one, so you can follow them more closely than the general chat without having to create a separate room,” Engadget noted. “And in case you only care about specific topics, you can also mute the rest.”

At the moment, Yahoo Together only comes in the form of an iOS and Android App. There’s no indication whether a desktop version is forthcoming.

Image: Yahoo

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