At long last, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger are interoperable. I blogged about this way back in October last year, when this was first planned - however now it is in beta.
Today, following Microsoft’s announcement, interoperability was introduced into a limited public beta. Currently, it is available for Yahoo! Messenger with Voice and Windows Live Messenger users, who sign up for the beta at this page for Yahoo! users and this page for WLM users.
This beta allows you to contact your contacts on the other network, taking that they are also part of the beta. Features are limited: text messages, online status and emoticons pretty much summarises it. It’s not cross-network VoIP, but it is a start.
I doubt Microsoft and Yahoo! are joining together for user’s benefit, but it’s probably to compete with AIM, and upcoming products such as Skype and Google Talk (and Jabber in general, with it). While MSN is dominant in the United Kingdom, and from what I’ve seen abroad, most of Europe, the AIM/ICQ network remains dominant in North America.
According to these statistics (which I presume are for the US), AOL’s AIM and ICQ network has 53,000,000 users, compared with MSN’s 27,000,000, Yahoo!’s 22,000,000 and Google’s 886,000. However, a combined MSN/Yahoo! network would create a network larger than AOL’s. (Note that MS’s press release claims that Y! and MSN combined have 350,000,000 users - hence the fact I believe those figures are US-centric)
Prior to this, the only true interoperability available in the IM world was between AIM and ICQ - who are both owned by AOL. Though we had programs which allowed you to aggregate all your IM accounts together, like Meebo, KoolIM, GAIM or Trillian, this required you to have an account on all protocols you wanted to use. This new service allows you just to have an account on one network, to be able to talk on two.
Tags: im, instant message, instant messaging, msn, yahoo!, yahoo, yahoo! messenger, yahoo messenger, microsoft, windows live, wlm, windows live messenger, msn messenger
Everyone use Gtalk!
So your saying someone that posted an exploit because the Admin’s ignored it. Should be banned?
Great moderating.. More like she is a little control happy.
anyways I am not arguing this..
Great blog BTW.
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i like this. works at my work