Yahoo gives IM to its Classic Mail

The millions of users of Yahoo Mail's "Classic" edition will get some of the features that made it into the Web portal's more advanced free e-mail service more than a year ago.

Yahoo has announced that it has begun rolling out integrated instant messaging (IM) and SMS text messaging features to Mail Classic users worldwide. The features had previously been available in the current (new) version of Yahoo Mail, which differs from Classic in that it offers a more dynamic, tab-based user interface.

But soon, users hanging onto "Classic Mail" version may get a nice surprise.

The features will take a few months to roll out to all of Mail Classic's users, which Yahoo described as numbering in the millions -- indicating that it still has a chunk of Yahoo's user base, even though the portal has been pushing its more advanced Mail version for more than a year. There are over 280 million users of market leader Yahoo's e-mail services worldwide, according to comScore.