Where did my friends nicknames go?

What version of messenger are you running? The old one had an option to display by nickname or by yahoo ID… check that, also right click on a buddy and pick contact details to see if the info is still there….

have your friends re-send their contact information,

If it was set on their side.

It is odd, but not incredibly uncommon for yahoo to drop addressbooks/contact lists.

Generally you can mark these occurences when they are doing server side upgrades.

Nicknames were ment to stop the illegal ID scene, it failed like a flat sausage. Yahoo! know the only way to stop illegal ID’s is to stop them connecting to chat and messenger, as i’ve outlined with them in private along with my partners, for a number of years. Although the last attempt by Yahoo! to beat the illegal ID’s way to setup scripts in known illegal ID room no Yahoo! Chat like “Bitchin:1” and the various booter rooms, to deactivate accounts known to be stolen accounts. This attempt also failed. Yahoo! know now if they really want to get ontop of the situation they need to backtrack to my idea, and get consistant with the ideals of config/register on the new user signup and disallow all non-standard “legal” ID’s from connecting to all communication tools and services on Yahoo!, to prevent trends of “showing off ID’s unobtainable by the majority” and “name trading between friends” and last but not least “the buying and selling of illegal ID’s via services such as paypal for hundreds of dollars per ID”. These sold ID’s are recycled almost straight away by the malicious users who have the account infomation, by using the “forgot password” feature of login.yahoo.com, where the malicious user then resells the ID for the same high price, and it goes round in a circle, until the malicious user is happy with his fast car and large plasma tv screen and villa in the sun.