There are many ways to use Yahoo! Messenger to contact your friends from within Yahoo! 360°. On your home page, all your friends are listed in the left area of the page. If they're online (and if they have set permissions in Messenger and in 360° to allow you to see their online status), you'll see the yellow smiley showing them online or the grey smiley showing them offline. Click on the smiley to start an instant messaging session.

We also show your friends' online status under their names in the center of the page, and you can click on these to start IMing.

In addition to the home page, we show online status in the same way on the Friends Content page. When you go to your friend's own page or blog, there's also a "Send IM" button below the person's photo on the left. And also on the My Page, we show online status for each friend in the Friends column on the right.

In Communication Settings, you can set your Messenger status so it shows only to the people you want to see it. Or you can hide your online status from other people on Yahoo! 360° completely. That's why you'll see some people who are not showing any online status.