Introducing Messenger’s Voice and Video Features
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What Are Messenger’s Video and Call Features?
With Yahoo! Messenger, you can hear voices and see faces... those of your friends. Messenger has several features that let you save money on phone and video calls to anywhere in the world. Now, while browsing the web or writing that long-awaited novel, you don’t need to cradle the phone under your chin. All you need is a headset or a microphone and speakers to talk to your friends, hands free. If you want to make video calls, add a webcam. It’s that easy.
Here’s what Messenger has to offer in answer to all of your calling needs:
Video calls—with a headset and webcam, you can not only talk to those who live far away, but you can see them, and it’s all free.
PC-to-PC calls—use your PC to call the PC of any friend who’s online using Messenger. This feature is completely free for both you and the friend you call.
Tip: PC-to-PC calling isn’t supported when conversing with contacts outside the Yahoo! network, such as your Windows Live™ Messenger contacts, Facebook friends, and Pingbox™ visitors.
Yahoo! Phone Out—place
calls from your PC to traditional phones and mobile phones in over
30 countries and at very low rates. This premium service requires
a pre-paid Yahoo! Voice account. To learn more, see the Signing Up for Yahoo! Voice tutorial.- Yahoo! Phone In—get
a phone number for your PC, hand it out to your friends, and let
them call you on your PC using their traditional phones and mobile
phones. To learn more, see the Signing Up for Yahoo! Voice tutorial.
Important: Emergency 911 calling services are not available through Messenger’s call features. Inform others who use this product that they must dial 911 through traditional phone lines or mobiles.
What’s that you say? You aren’t always available to accept calls through Messenger? Of course you aren’t. That’s why we let your friends leave voice messages when you’re not signed into Messenger or not accepting calls. You can listen to your messages using an email service of your choice. Find out more in the Setting Up Voice Messaging tutorial. Better yet, if you have the Phone Out service, forward your incoming computer calls (not video calls) to your traditional or mobile phone. To learn more, take a look at the Placing and Receiving PC-to-Phone Calls video tutorial.
What’s Next
There are just a few things that you need to take care of before placing and receiving calls. Optimize your video and voice equipment so that you have the best listening and speaking environment.
Words to Know
- Pingbox: an embedded box on a Web page where visitors to the page can send you instant messages and which lists visitors on your Messenger List.
- Video call: a call in which you can hear and see the person your talking with.
- Voicemail: a message left in the caller’s own voice for the intended recipient to listen to later.
- Webcam: a video camera typically attached to a computer.
- Windows Live™ Messenger: Microsoft® Windows’ free instant messaging application.