Everybody else has been playing catch up. Skype quickly moved to add video chat, one of its staple products, and then added Qik Video Connect earlier this year. Now, Yahoo has gotten into the game with its new Yahoo Messenger app for iOS. The new Yahoo Messenger for iOS has been optimized for iPad and can do video and voice calls, text chat, presence, send SMS and share photos in real-time. Importantly, iPad 2 users can video chat to talk with PCs. As a communications app, it is a strong entry from forgotten source of innovation.

One of the first problems I have had with Yahoo Messenger is that it did not import all of my Yahoo email contacts. As such, I started the service with zero contacts in my queue at all. Yahoo has been throwing Messenger at users for several years but, unlike Google Chat (and now Google Talk), it has not reached critical mass of adopters in the U.S. who actually use it. If an app falls makes a video call in a forest and there is no one on the other end, does the app even exist? To be fair, Yahoo Messenger is well used internationally. Yet, so is Skype.

For this reason, Yahoo has smartly tied its contacts in with the ability to import contacts from Windows Live MSN Messenger. The theory is that, of the two services, users will have a deep contact list on at least one of them. Windows Live is widely used on PCs and in the enterprise and in terms of pure volume has more users than either Google Talk or Yahoo Messenger.

Speaking of Google Talk, it is curious that Yahoo Messenger was able to beat Google to the punch with a video calling app that functions with iOS. Yahoo has focused less in recent years on creating and maintaining technological endeavors (so long, Delicious) and more on beefing up its content offerings. Google is the complete opposite. Is it a sign of the cold war between Apple and Google that Mountain View has not made an app that can video chat with Cupertino? It is hard to tell, but for all the negative streams swirling around Yahoo, it took the initiative and built a good communications application for popular mobile devices. Wonder if anybody will actually use it.

Yahoo Mail has been improved with the idea of making it focus more on the social connections that are already implicit in users' email exchanges. The Yahoo Mail homepage will now display status updates from a user's friends on the service. If a contact uploads new images to Flickr, for example, these updates will appear on the Yahoo Mail homepage (and also in Yahoo Messenger).

Yahoo also now allows users to attach up to 25MB of photos to messages and has improved its tools to attach and view these images. To make sharing photos easier, Yahoo has integrated Xoopit's 'MyPhotos' application into Yahoo Mail. Yahoo acquired Xoopit last month. In addition, Yahoo will also integrate Evite into Yahoo Mail, which makes it easier to create invitations based on a user's address book. 

In addition, Yahoo has also updated its mobile, web-based version of Yahoo Mail. The site is now a lot cleaner and allows users to read Word, Excel, and PowerPoint attachments right from within the web application.

Some of these updates are quite reminiscent of what Microsoft is doing with its Live products. On Windows Live, for example, users can also aggregate their updates from other services and see what their friends are doing online. While Yahoo is integrating all these services into Yahoo Mail, Microsoft Live splits all these tools up into separate applications.

Despite Bing Deal, Yahoo Redesigns Search

Interestingly, Yahoo also decided to preview an updated look and feel of Yahoo Search. The new look will feature a three-column layout, similar to the Yahoo homepage. While most of Yahoo's own search engine technology will obviously soon disappear in favor of Microsoft Bing, Yahoo wants to align the layout of its search engine with the rest of its services. The new layout brings services like Search Monkey and data filters into a column on the left side. None of these are new services, though they do bring old services that were often underutilized to the foreground.

People Search

Yahoo will also give its users a better way to search for people. Once these updates go live, whenever somebody uses Yahoo Search to find information about a person, Yahoo will display data from LinkedIn, Twitter, FriendFeed, and Facebook.

Nice, But What About Bing?

All of these updates are quite nice, though once Yahoo switches over to Bing, it will remain to be seen how many of Yahoo's search tools will actually survive the transition. During today's presentation, Larry Cornett, Yahoo's VP of Search Products and Design, stressed that the company will continue to invest in search technologies. During the Q&A session after today's presentation, Yahoo also focused on the fact that it will continue to control how search results are displayed, even if those results come from Bing. Yahoo will also continue to be able to add on to Bing's results, which sounds as if programs like Search Monkey could survive the transition.

Yahoo Messenger

Yahoo also announced updates to Yahoo Messenger. The new beta of Messenger 10 will launch in 25 countries and will feature support for status updates, similar to Yahoo Mail. None of these updates are extremely exciting, though it is important to remember that Yahoo Messenger has a lot of users, both in the US and worldwide. Many of these users will surely appreciate these updates, which, among others, include support for high-quality video calls.

Visually, Yahoo Messenger is very clean and easy to use. The standard virtual keyboard input area is customized to optimize screen space and allow incoming IMs to be separated from text you are still typing in. The app makes a sound when a new IM appears, or a buzz if the screen is locked but the app is running. If you exit out of the application without logging yourself out first, you will appear 'idle' to your friends so that they can still send you a message if necessary.

For the person that relies primarily on Yahoo! Messenger for their IM needs, this app should be all they require to get the most out of the service. We'd like to see a landscape keyboard supported simply because it is easier to type with. Take note that, (as CNet News also covered), the sound effects and vibration can't be turned on or off in the settings.

If you want support for more IM networks at the same time, there are a number of 3rd-party applications like Palringo (free) and IM+ (paid) that already support Yahoo Messenger among one of many other services, as well as maintaining your online status even when the app is not running.