Chats are always available until you remove them.

When you add a URL, Messenger automatically makes it Web-enabled so you or your chat participant can click on it and go to Safari on the iPhone. Over a three-day period, I never had any trouble holding quick conversations and lengthy chat session with several parties.

That said, Yahoo Messenger for iPhone works reliably. (Yahoo tells users to “stay tuned” for more features in this mobile app.) I’d also like to see more social-networking integration-my Messenger status update feeding my FaceBook status, for example. There’s support for emoticons, but not the animated ones desktop users are used to. You can’t chat over video or audio, there’s no support for any other instant messaging clients, and histories in the desktop version aren’t reflected in the mobile app. My only real complaint about Yahoo Messenger is that it feels feature-deprived when compared to the desktop client. IPhone 3.0 and its support for push notifications, however. That’s likely to change with the summer arrival of Like other iPhone chat apps, though, Yahoo Messenger is limited by the iPhone OS’s inability to let apps in the background-you have to be in the app to receive alerts.

The caveat here is that you’ll only stay signed on for 10 minutes if you stop using the app. Messenger stays active if you take a call or switch to another app.

Download yahoo messenger app