Yahoo! to shutter Messenger on feature phones and four other products on April 30

Yahoo! has been on a cleaning spree since last year. After public chatrooms on Messenger, Avatars and its BlackBerry app, products such as Upcoming, Yahoo! Deals, Yahoo! SMS Alerts, Yahoo! Kids, Yahoo! Mail and Messenger feature phone (J2ME) apps and older versions of Yahoo! Mail are getting the axe. The decision to shut down these products is a part of its big plan to focus the company’s energy on building products that can be a part of users’ daily habits. Probably, the company plans to focus more on mobile products like the recently introduced Yahoo! Mail for iPad and Android tablets and Yahoo! Weather for iPad. It plans to kill the older versions of Yahoo! Mail on June 3,2013 while the other mentioned products will be discontinued as on April 30, 2013.

Yahoo! picks the axe... again

As on April 30, the company won't support the Upcoming API. Those who have uploaded events to Upcoming can click here to download their information. Users will also have to pull out and save their coupons as Yahoo! Deal gets the axe. To save the coupon information, they will need to copy and save coupons to a text file on their computer. Click here to follow the complete instructions for saving coupons. Yahoo! will also bid goodbye to the SMS Alerts service. Those who get mobile horoscope alerts can get the same on yahoo.com. Users can also choose to receive alerts via email or Yahoo! Messenger by visiting alerts.yahoo.com and activing the option.

Yahoo! Kids, or what was earlier known as Yahooligans, will be shut too. However, the company promises to introduce new services. For instance, users who are under 13 years can register for a Yahoo! ID through its Family Accounts program to connect with family and friends via Yahoo! Mail and Messenger.

It will also shut down Mail and Messenger apps for feature phones (J2ME). However, feature phone users can access these services via mobile web. On the other hand, it is focussing on smartphones with Yahoo Mail apps for iOS, Android and Windows 8, and Yahoo! Messenger apps for Android and iOS. Yahoo! also bids goodbye to older versions of Yahoo! Mail, starting June 3, 2013. Users will have to switch to the new Yahoo! Mail.

We’ve seen Google also go on a continuous cleaning spree by pulling the plug off several products, and the latest one is the Google Reader. Yahoo! has also started taking a hard look at its products and is seemingly trying to keep pace with the latest mobile trends.