Yahoo Together is the new Slack-like business messaging app you’ll never use

Oath Inc, the new owners of Yahoo, has announced it’s working on new messaging app Yahoo Together, in hopes of turning around its five-year decline.

Although the majority of its brands have been through a series of identity crises and security breaches over the past few years, Yahoo is still kicking, and now they want back in on the social messaging game.

Available on both iOS and Android, Yahoo Together is Yahoo’s attempt to reclaim its former glory. Announced in an Oath blog post, Together posits itself as an app aimed at “family, friends, book clubs [and] bowling leagues”.

The unique selling point of Yahoo Together is its group topic segregation, through which each group chat is also divisible into distinct topic areas. As we’ve previously pointed out, this is the same selling point as business and office workspace app Slack.

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Another feature of Together is its image search functionality, allowing users to search for images which may have disappeared in a slew of messages. Many messaging apps already have similar functions, including WhatsApp and Facebook’s Messenger.

Yahoo Together does include one novel feature — smart messages. The app recognises dates and times sent in messages and sends reminders to chat members at this time. Unlike  Google apps, which can also set calendar dates and schedule appointments, this process is automated. You can also set reminders in Slack but it also requires you to set them manually.

The final feature Yahoo Together advertises are “one-tap reactions”. These allow users to customise a reaction image or gif, in much the same way as Facebook Messenger already does.

Essentially, Yahoo Together’s is a collection of features that other apps already have, and it remains to be seen if anyone will actually choose to use it. The main selling point of any messaging app is its unique functions and protections — Snapchat’s is its temporary image function, WhatsApp’s is its supposed top-tier security. Since Yahoo Together seemingly has nothing special to it, I’ll be intrigued to see just how it draws users away from competitors.