Hot on the heels of Windows Live Messenger 9.0 (2009) Wave 3 Beta made available earlier this month by Microsoft, Yahoo has released its own instant messaging client. Yahoo Messenger 9.0 is designed to integrate with the latest editions of the Windows  client including Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows XP Service Pack 3. Yahoo Messenger 9.0 brings a series of enhancements from a redesign of the graphical user interface to the Yahoo Messenger Pingbox.

“Yahoo Messenger Pingbox, a new application that once embedded into your blog, website or social network page, lets visitors IM you anonymously (or they can identify themselves) without needing to download or even sign into Yahoo Messenger. The good news is you’re anonymous too; visitors to your page never see your Yahoo ID. Pingbox is great for giving your site/page/profile visitors a quick way to chat with you,” revealed Sarah Bacon, Yahoo Product Manager.

But in addition to the Pingbox, Yahoo Messenger 9.0 also features three new skins (and a total of 12), the original emotions pack because of feedback from end users (now complete with new additions), the evolution of the ignore capability, as well as online video & picture viewer. In addition, the latest iteration of the Yahoo instant messaging client also delivers an import contact wizard (from Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, Orkut but also other services), games, and Yahoo updates.

“In addition to new features, we also reworked the status message menu, making it easier to share custom messages and web links. We also added two views for your contact list – detailed (larger display images, full status with updates) or compact (smaller images, one-line name and status). To change the contact list view, click the menu button to the right of the contact search bar,” Bacon added.

Yahoo Messenger 9.0 is available for download here.