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Yahoo! Messenger with Voice has just greatly increased its number of potential uses. Yahoo "officially launched (out of beta) its newest IM service with more than 180 custom plug-in features available to users worldwide" last night.

The plug-ins are free, and they offer a wide array of features. One that should help bring Yahoo! Messenger up to date with some competitors is Yahoo! Avatars. "Interact with Avatars in a fun and collaborative virtual environment that includes changing their moods and customizing the background with different decors and images from Yahoo! Image Search," the company suggested.

Another new plug-in is the Yahoo! Movie Trailer. In a company statement, it was explained that users can "scroll through and watch current movie trailers within the plug-in or expand them to view in full-screen while carrying out an IM conversation with a buddy."

The statement also included the plug-in recommendations of users classified as "social butterflies" and "Netizens." The social butterfly crowd was partial to Yahoo! 360, which "allows users to update and stay on top of new postings to the site without leaving the Messenger window."

Yahoo! Calendar was a popular plug-in among this group, as well. With it, a person can "view a friend's calendar alongside theirs to make it easy to schedule dates and identify meeting places." Sounds nifty.

Netizens recommended the Pando plug-in, which, according to Yahoo, is an "easy, fast and reliable way to share large files or folders with friends by providing up to 1 GB of space at a time."

With 180 plug-ins to choose from, there is surely something of interest to everyone. These fresh releases may or may not be enough to draw people to Yahoo! Messenger with Voice, but they should undoubtedly please current users.

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Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.