Yahoo to axe public-chat rooms feature

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Yahoo has announced plans to permanently axe the public talk rooms feature of its messaging implement.

It said in a blog post it would substitute the contraption, along with other services being eliminated, with fresh features.

The chat-rooms device came under fire in 2005, with advertisers pulling ads after reports of illegal under-age sex-themed rooms.

Yahoo said the feature was closing because it was not "adding enough value" for users.

Along with public talk rooms, Pingbox and Windows Live Messenger interoperability are all scheduled to be eliminated on fourteen December, and some other features will vanish at the end of January.

"Sometimes… we have to make rough decisions," Yahoo said.

"This helps us spend more energy on creating practices that make Yahoo the most joy way to spend your time."

The company said it would now concentrate on modernising its "core Yahoo products practices".

‘Teenage women’

Yahoo Messenger is one of the earliest online messaging contraptions, launched in 1998.

In 2005, Yahoo closed a number of talk rooms, including "chicks thirteen & up for much older fellows," "teenage women for older fat boys" and "8-12 yo [year-old] ladies for older guys".

Many of these rooms were in the "Schools and education" and "Teenage" talk categories.

The company then announced it would restrict the service to users aged eighteen and older.

Hook-up talks

Other websites that provide online talk services have also been involved in under-age hookup scandals.

In June this year, Habbo Hotel, a popular social network for children, temporarily suspended the talk function on its service, following claims paedophiles were using the virtual hotel to groom youngsters for hookup.

A two-month Channel four investigation exposed explicit hookup talks were common within minutes of logging on to the service.

A spokesman for children’s charity Childnet told the Big black cock: "The message from us is that children need to know how to stay safe."

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