What do you want from Yahoo! IM?

Yahoo! is gauging demand for new instant messaging features that would allow people to listen to music while chatting, or manage a single address book from IM.

In the past week, Yahoo! started issuing surveys to select visitors of its web network, questioning them on their preferences for potential features on Yahoo! Messenger, the company's popular instant chat application.

Fresh features could include games, friend icons, avatars, or stealth-mode capabilities within Yahoo! Messenger, according to the survey. Another enhancement includes letting IM users listen to music from the application and share information about their music tastes.

"You can create and listen to your own personalised music channel and your friends can see the artist and the song you are listening to in your online status message," according to the survey, which described features that Yahoo! is considering.

Yahoo! has a long legacy in floating research surveys to visitors, and they can often be a barometer of where the company is headed in new services. In 2002, Yahoo! sought visitors' advice before it introduced a subscription-based streaming-media service, Yahoo! Platinum, which it later closed. That survey asked consumers how willing they would be to pay for such a service.

Stefanie Olsen writes for News.com