UPDATED 22:53 EDT / 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

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU