Hi HN, back in October 2024 I've launched Buzzd Chat, a Y!M revival project.

I started it back in January 2024 as a reverse engineering challenge/learning project and after posting some short videos on YouTube to show my friends the progress I've made, someone from another (now dead) IM revival project's Discord server found those videos and contacted me.

Turned out there is a fairly large community around old IM clients and some revival projects that already offered support for older Y!M versions (v5, v6), but with a very limited feature set (logging in, adding/removing friends and chatting).

Most if not all of these projects revolve around MSN/WLM, AIM and other IM clients that were more popular in the US. The Y!M support was typically an afterthought.

After some convincing from the guy that first contacted me on YouTube, I've decided to make this project public and with his help we've launched it in October 2024 as Buzzd Chat along with a Discord server where people could contact us and share their IDs and connect with each other.

I've started the project reversing Y!M V9 -- was the one I remembered using the most back in the day -- and because of that, the project got, for what it is and little to no publicity, a lot of attention. The subset of users interested in Y!M really wanted better support and newer versions.

The project is still under development, we've still got a long way to go till I'll be fully satisfied and ready to open source it.

Supported Y!M versions: - V9 only atm (focusing on implementing as many features as possible before exploring older or even newer versions)

Features (so far):

Authentication

Profile/Display pictures

Status management

Buddy management (add/delete/group/move buddies)

Buddy ignoring

Visibility management (invisible to all, invisible to some etc.)

Buddy list sharing (share your contacts)

Address book/Contacts management (add/remove/update contacts)

Photo sharing

File sharing

Audibles

Emoticons (all of them, even the ones introduced after V9)

Reliable messaging (basically acking that messages have been received)