Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 7 years and 9 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.I’ve been a Trillian Pro user since 2004 but the time has come to drop my favorite cross-platform instant messaging client. Apparently Yahoo is shutting down the legacy servers that run the old Windows/Mac client versions of Yahoo Messenger (in favor of the web and mobile versions) on August 5 so Trillian will no longer work with that service. Couple that with a security breach on July 4 that resulted in the permanent shutdown of the Trillian user support forums and blog and I found it hard rationalize keeping the software installed. Now I’m glad I hadn’t yet paid to renew my Pro subscription for the new 6.0 version of the client.
I received this reply from Scott at Cerulean Studios in response to my e-mail complaining about Trillian and Yahoo Messenger:
“The decision to not support Yahoo anymore wasn’t our own, but predicated on the fact that the machines themselves will be going offline on the Yahoo side. While they do have a newer messenger product, it’s not the same concept and wouldn’t be a good fit for Trillian right now. As one example, there is no contact list with the new messenger so if we signed you into it there would be nothing for us to display to you. There is also no presence, so you couldn’t set yourself away/etc… it’s more of a mobile messenger product right now ala WhatsApp. We’ll be keeping our eyes on their development to see if that changes. Thanks for the support over the years!”
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that some of the tools we love aren’t created and maintained by large corporations (like a Google or Microsoft) but just a few people trying to make cool software for like-minded folks. Thanks, Scott!