Friends and family are just an instant away with the free Yahoo Messenger download. Send instant messages (IM’s) real time to your friends or become a member of a chat room to meet new people and discuss topics that you have special interest in. From sports and politics to health and fitness, these rooms are a great way to get together with like-minded people from around the globe. Messenger provides you with a way to use your regular Yahoo ID, or create one that is used only in the chat rooms. This protects your identity, yet will still allow you to explore new perspectives and join discussions.

Sharing photos is a great way to keep friends and family caught up on the people in your life and to stay in touch when you travel. The free Yahoo Messenger download enables you to share photographs from your Flickr online account or your desktop. You can continue your instant message conversations while everyone gets a chance to simultaneously view the photos. The latest versions allow users to make PC-to-PC calls, as well as PC to phone calls. Speakers and a microphone are needed for calls to be completed. A phone account is required to make and receive calls from the PC to the telephone.

Rates can be as little as one cent per minute which is cheaper that most long distance carriers. The free Yahoo Messenger download provides even more opportunities to connect with friends and family by allowing free text messaging from your Messenger account to their cell phones. If you have Yahoo and some of your friends are on the Windows Live Messenger, Reuters Messaging or Lotus Sametime networks, you can still send messages directly from Yahoo. As long as they are part of your buddy list, you will be able to see their status and availability. There are no additional downloads required nor do you need to transfer all of your information.

As a bonus, you can also get 10,000 Smileys that you can easilty use and add to your Yahoo Messenger account. You can then use them to fully express your emotions every time you chat with your friends online. Instead of just doing the silly text emoticons, you can use full color 3d animated emoticons and smileys to really get your feeling across. Download Smileys and Emoticons here.

If you will be away from your computer, why not forward your messages to your phone. With the free Yahoo Messenger download, your IM’s can be sent directly there and you won’t miss a thing. Privacy settings allow you to be available for some contacts, yet shown as “offline” for others. Tabbed conversation windows allow you to have several conversations going at once without cluttering up your screen. This makes it easier to keep everyone organized.

Yahoo messenger is an advertising based instant messaging client. It is for this reason the download is free and additional features can be added without additional fees. Download Yahoo Messenger today.