Yahoo Livetext
| Company type | Product of Yahoo |
|---|---|
| Industry | Mobile applications, Messaging |
| Founded | July 2015 |
| Defunct | March 2016 |
| Fate | Discontinued and merged into Yahoo Messenger |
| Products | Video messaging application without audio |
| Parent | Yahoo |
Yahoo! Livetext was a video messaging application without audio, created by Yahoo for both iPhone and Android platforms. Introduced in July 2015, Livetext sought to establish itself within the mobile messaging landscape, competing with popular apps such as Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. Despite these ambitions, it struggled to attract a substantial user base and was discontinued after eight months in March 2016.
History
Livetext emerged as a component of CEO Marissa Mayer's initiative to rejuvenate Yahoo's offerings and shift focus towards the mobile sector. It was designed to complement Yahoo's existing communication tools, including the desktop-centric Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger.
In October 2014, Yahoo acquired the messaging startup MessageMe, which boasted several million users at the time. This move aligned with Mayer’s strategy of acquiring emerging companies to infuse new talent into Yahoo. The development of Livetext was led by the MessageMe team, leveraging the technology originally developed for MessageMe.
Following its launch in July 2015, Livetext briefly entered the top 150 apps on the App Store, but rapidly dropped out of the top 1,000 within a fortnight.
By February 2016, former MessageMe co-founder and CEO Arjun Sethi departed Yahoo to become an investment partner at Social Capital. At this point, more than one-third of startup founders who had joined Yahoo through acquisitions had already exited. Later that month, Yahoo announced workforce reductions affecting approximately 15 percent of employees.
In March 2016, as part of a wider effort to streamline its product lineup—which included discontinuing Yahoo! Games, Yahoo Astrology, and Yahoo! Search BOSS—Yahoo declared that Livetext would be shut down. The company intended to merge Livetext’s capabilities into Yahoo Messenger, which was positioned as its main messaging service until its own closure in July 2018.
Features
The primary functionality of Livetext was silent video texting, enabling users to exchange text messages while simultaneously viewing live video streams without any accompanying sound. This silent communication mode made it suitable for use in settings such as offices or public transportation where audio conversations could be intrusive.
Like Snapchat, conversations on Livetext were temporary; neither video streams nor messages were stored by the application.
Due to its unconventional design, Livetext was frequently characterized by critics and reviewers as "awkward," "strange," or "weird."