Yahoo noticed how users were often wary of opening Snapchat videos in public for fear of either disturbing those around them, or of being embarrassed by whatever their friends are about to say.
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During the demo, Senior Director of Product Management Arjun Sethi started live messaging sessions with several friends and co-workers, sharing video footage with each other. If you’ve used Snapchat, or Slingshot before, odds are you’re familiar with this all too common text over video concept.
Called Livetext, it transmits video between users then overlays their typed text messages on the video.
Asked about its similarity to video streaming apps, Periscope and Meerkat, Adam Cahan, Yahoo’s senior vice president for video, design and emerging products, said Livetext was different because it was built for one-to-one interaction rather than one-to-many.
From today, the service is available in the App Store and Google Play Store in the US, the UK, Canada, Germany and France.
Yahoo is making a first step in the messaging world, with the launch of LiveText for iOS and Android.
The app will certainly make the texting experience more immediate an interactive – if your friend is staring at you right in the eye, it makes it a bit more hard to put down the phone and walk away.
Yahoo is taking another stab at messaging with a new mobile messenger app called Livetext.
Yahoo has recently announced of its new Livetext service, which is basically an app that allows users to share video and texts with no sound. That’s why it’s not surprising that Livetexting, which at its very base is silent, no history, instant video chatting, was tested by an overwhelming majority of teenage girls in beta. It must be noted that this service will not be a replacement to Yahoo Messenger in any way and will function independently. That means that you can see your chat partner and send them messages, but you can’t actually hear them.
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Yahoo has been testing Livetext the past few weeks in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Ireland. There’s no way to turn on audio, Mr. Cahan said. “We want to create an emotional connection”.
