A little while back the development team behind Yahoo!’s instant messaging (IM) app released three new/updated versions of Yahoo! Messenger. Amongst them there was one meant for the Mac OS X user, mainly Yahoo! Messenger for MAC 3.0 Beta (presumably Beta 5 because the last release was Beta 4). The update was supposed to bring stability and performance improvements amongst other things, and for most users it did. For a small subset of users though it brought nothing but headaches.

Senior Product Manager with Yahoo! Messenger, Sarah Bacon, explains: “We’re aware that some of our users that upgraded to the latest version of Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0 are having sign-in problems. One problem we did find is the video software called CamCamX directly conflicts with our latest version of Yahoo! Messenger for the Mac. If this video mixing software is installed on your Mac, your Yahoo! Messenger will no longer work because of a software conflict.”

According to the Yahoo! team, the only way to address this problem, at least for the time being, is to uninstall the CamCamX software. To my mind, there is one other option at your disposal: use one of the online versions of Yahoo! Messenger. There’s Yahoo! Messenger for the web, Yahoo! Messenger integrated in Yahoo! Mail, and Yahoo! Messenger as part of the brand new Yahoo! homepage. The online experience varies from the desktop app one, but what are you gonna do if you don’t want to uninstall CamCamX?

If uninstalling the CamCamX software does not work, and this is a possibility, then using the online version of Yahoo! Messenger is the only option. Sarah Bacon again: “We realize this particular fix will not solve everyone’s sign-in problems, so we’ll continue troubleshooting the issue.”

If you would like to get Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0 Beta, a download location is available here.