Yahoo debuts ‘silent’ messaging app

Yahoo is releasing a mobile messaging app that combines texting with live one-on-one video. The tech giant hopes it will prove a worthy rival to WhatsApp, Snapchat and others.

Video can be viewed live as you type, or automatically recorded if your friend doesn’t join the conversation, and replayed to them when they open the message.

Arjun Sethi, a senior director of product management at Yahoo and head of the Yahoo Livetext messaging app project, said “It’s a new way to communicate: casual text on top of video”. The app also allows texting on the video screen. Its preceding display messaging service or product, Yahoo Messenger, appeared to be the most common on the spot messaging resource in regulations of absolute one-of-a-kind viewers, before it at a standstill in 2012. It’s a late re-entrant into the mobile messaging space after essentially punting; it stopped updating the Android version of its web-based chat platform last October. It may be weird at first but I’m pretty sure that people will get used to video-texting even when in public-while walking, riding a train, at a restaurant, or just about anywhere. So for example, if you are hiking somewhere, you can quickly send the video of yours with a text on it saying “enjoying a hike” or something like that.

Livetext will be available to download tomorrow on smartphones that can access the iTunes App Store or the Google Play Store. “We want to create an emotional connection”.

The app was tested in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Ireland, as well as some US college campuses.

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“It’s actually the audio that makes it a very different and all-consuming forms of communication”, said Yahoo senior vice president of mobile and emerging products Adam Cahan.

Earlier this month, the company introduced Yahoo Sports Daily Fantasy, a betting service available on mobile devices that signalled Yahoo’s entrance into the US$2.6 billion online sports gambling business.