Yahoo is looking to get back into the messaging industry with Livetext, an app that was tested in territories such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Ireland but is now ready to be released in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France and Germany.
Livetext is Yahoo's idea of the most natural way for users to communicate with their friends and family, as users send text messages to each other along a video call. However, the video call is muted, so users will be reading text messages and then watching each other's reactions as they send and receive messages.
According to Yahoo, audio is only rarely convenient in the fast pace of the world today, so it will be fine to simply drop it. In addition, Yahoo noted that users have lost the natural flow of conversations as messaging apps developed, and it is looking to bring conversations back to their basics with Livetext's focus on real-time reactions and words.
"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 nonintrusive," Yahoo product management senior director Arjun Sethi wrote in a Tumblr post detailing the launch of Livetext.
It could be said that Yahoo's Livetext has taken some of the more popular features of other messaging apps and included them in the new service, as the company that once dominated the industry with Yahoo Messenger looks to get back into the game.
Yahoo is targeting young users with Livetext, who may want to communicate with their friends without audio but with a little more than just text.
Similar to Apple's FaceTime, Livetext conversations have no time limit, and users can use either the front or back cameras for their communications. Livetext will also be able to display both the text messages and the emojis on the video screen, similar to the layout of Twitter's Periscope, and just like Facebook Messenger, Livetext will show friends that the user has recently contacted as avatars.
Livetext also shares certain similarities with Snapchat, as the service does not save or store in an archive all the sent messages through it. In addition, the lists of contacts and friend requests are organized in such a way similar to how Snapchat does it.
The app's launch date on the App Store and the Google Play Store is July 30.
