Yahoo! recently introduced Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 beta the next version of their popular IM client Yahoo! Messenger 8.1

It has some cool new feature like..

- A whole new look for your contact list. Keep it in detail view to see larger Avatar images for your friends, or switch to compact list view (in the Contacts menu). Plus, you can just hover and click to IM, SMS or call a friend.

- Brand new skins and emoticons! Click the dot near the top of your Messenger window to choose a skin, and check the emoticon menu for the new ones that were inspired by user entries in our Emoticontest earlier this year (more on our winners in a future post).

- New Flickr integration in the photo sharing feature. Easily share photos from your Flickr.com account, or save photos shared with you directly to Flickr. Read more here.

Its good to see some marked improvements made… its available in many languages too… would have loved to use it. But unfortunately the machine I am currently using won’t support it. Anyways a nice product by Yahoo!

Will definitely switch to it once its final version comes out. Now only if they would introduce a mobile messenger in India, it would definitely serve my needs..