Exclusive online indicators is one of the features that Yahoo messenger power users get which can be used to display those special status images in Web and Messenger. Since Yahoo power user is one of the top 5 search keyword that get users to my site I decided to reveal a simple to get the web Exclusive Online indicator.
The exclusive online indicators are just better images nothing more than that. The online status indicator was their with the old Yahoo profile which got removed with new beta profile and I initially thought they removed it to prevents bots from getting user id. But every ones surprise they just hide this feature under the carpet and re-marketed the same Indicator with new images as a special feature for power users. One good marketing strategy which created the buzz..
Well not to bore you here is the URL that you would have to change to get online status of a user.
http://presence.msg.yahoo.com/online?u=XYZ&m=g&t=14
Just pass the user id to the U query string and t is an integer (0 – 16) and viola you get the beautiful icons. If you have too much time then you can create your own icons and switch the image.
Well here is something people should know about this service. The service will return an online status for an user when
- User is online in any of the messenger.
- User is invisible to a particular user but visible to other users. Yes the stealth setting are not stealth enough its like covering an elephant head with a paper towel and leaving the other area open.
It returns the offline when users is offline or invisible for every one.
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dai….
this is great tool but quite simple to check actual status of a user. Great one.
Yahoo might be watching u