I got a demo of the new Yahoo Messenger for Vista, which has been redesigned to take advantage of Vista-specific features. Since it was the first time I was seeing Vista, I must admit that I was operating at a disadvantage, but what I saw suggests that Yahoo is continuing its Messenger strategy of developing the Messenger client that best takes advantage of the specific operating system, like Vista's transparent windows.
Yahoo has introduced tabbed windows for IM in this version, which means you can drag one independent chat window onto another, and wind up with one chat window with two tabs. Or you can drag a tab off to create a new window.
Yahoo is also trying to integrate other services more closely with Messenger. For example, Fantasy Football is supported by the automatic creation of a group in the Messenger contact list.
The product is not in beta yet, but Yahoo plans to roll that out as soon as possible, and to continuously be rolling out new functionality as more user roll onto Vista.
My sense is that the adoption of Vista will be much slower than Microsoft would have us believe, but Yahoo is being sensible, building a Vista version of Messenger with basic functionality immediately. I just hope that Yahoo continues the push on the Mac client as diligently, since that client is woefully behind the curve relative to the Windows client.
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