Yahoo!, in a move that I’m sure came as a very pleasant surprise for all its fans out there, announced the launch as a Beta of its newly redesigned homepage. Then new homepage, explained SVP of Integrated Consumer Experiences with Yahoo!, Tapan Bhat, was the result of “months of testing, listening, adjusting, and testing again.” It also came with some cool new features like My Favorites, Trend Setter and App Maker.

You may not have noticed this, but the company’s instant messaging (IM) client is also an integral part of the new homepage. You can access your Yahoo! Messenger account straight from the new homepage, much in the same manner you access the same account from within Yahoo! Mail.

Senior Product Manager with Yahoo!, Sarah Bacon, explains: “For the new Beta page, we worked with the team behind yahoo.com to create a new Yahoo! Messenger module. This new version provides a quick view of which friends are online, plus you can easily IM them right from the page.”

The new Yahoo! Messenger on the brand new Yahoo! homepage comes with several features. Let’s take a look at them:

All your friends in one place: you get to see all your Yahoo! Messenger contacts, and contacts from your Yahoo! Address Book, right within the new Yahoo! Messenger module. The experience is very similar to the one provided by the Yahoo! Messenger module in Yahoo! Mail.

IM or SMS your friends: you can socialize with your friends either via IM (instant messaging), or via SMS messages. To IM one of your friends you need only locate him/her in the contacts list and click the IM icon to the right. The same goes for when you want to send an SMS text to that friend; just that you have to click the SMS icon instead. If you don’t see an SMS icon it means that you did not provide a mobile number for that contact.

Contact search: for those of you that have a lot of people in your contacts list, Yahoo! Messenger provides a handy search box. Located at the top of the module, it lets you swiftly find the friend you want to communicate with.

Collapse and expand groups: just click the arrow at the right of the group’s header and that group will collapse or expand.

Change the sorting order in your list: at the top of the module there is a Settings icon. Just click it and sort your list alphabetically or in reverse alphabetical order.

Related links: at the right you will notice Yahoo! Messenger-related links. They will help you with things like finding the latest Yahoo! Messenger version, how to use a webcam, or how to get to know emoticons.

To try out the new Yahoo! homepage, just click here.
To see what features are available in the new Yahoo! homepage, check out our detailed article here.