Yahoo tries its hand at a messaging app with Livetext
Don’t have enough messaging apps installed on your iPhone? Yahoo is hoping you’ve got room for at least one more.
After a recent soft rollout in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Ireland, Yahoo Livetext will arrive in five new countries – the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and France – tomorrow.
The best way to describe Livetext, at least for iOS users, is a combination of iMessage and FaceTime with a big twist, it is completely silent.
Here’s a quick video that shows the app in action. Click here if you can’t see it.
In a blog post, Yahoo tried to describe how Livetext is different than other messaging apps on the App Store:
Connecting with your friends should be spontaneous, convenient and memorable – but also fleeting, just like a real-life conversation. So today, we’re introducing Yahoo Livetext – a new way to communicate that blends the immediacy, simplicity and ease of texting with the expressiveness of video, without the audio. We see video as a way to make your conversations more authentic, and we see text as a way to connect that’s quick and non-intrusive. We think you’re really going to love it.
Interestingly, much like Snapchat, any video and text chats captured in Livetext will be automatically deleted once the app is closed.
I’ll happily admit I’m not exactly a big user of messaging apps, and I don’t exactly think Livetext will turn the App Store upside down. If I want a video chat, I’ll FaceTime. And when I just need to have a quick conversation, a short iMessage will do. Combining the two doesn’t seem to add much value.
But maybe that’s just me.
For other app news today, see: Fantastical on iOS gets drafts and Japanese localization, The quirky vampire returns in Nosferatu 2 – Run from the Sun, and Going bonkers at work? Maybe it’s time to ‘Switch’ jobs.
