I have to agree that this "new feature" will probably add yet another layer of complexity and potential instability to an already cluttered interface. YM pulls in so much crap from other Yahoo! services (calendar, ads, weather, tickers, etc. etc...) that its load time lags GMail's -- sometimes dramatically. I've even had the "new" YM freeze completely in the middle of so many calls.

They should scale back the add-ins and gee-whiz features and concentrate on real improvements like they did with the faceted browse of search results. Now that's useful and it mirrors functionality that already exists on many e-commerce sites.

More pipes do not make better plumbing.

InfoGeek