Yahoo, Microsoft Integrate IM Services
Yahoo & Microsoft have opened their Instant Messaging Networks to inter-operate with each other early today, in a limited public test.
This move shall be welcomed by users who don’t want to switch to other network or manage multiple buddy lists for different networks.
Now after this integration, Yahoo & MSN Messenger users can talk with each other using their choice of IM network/application.
This move poses pressure on AOL, the market leader with 56 percent market share of IM users.
According to Nielsen/Netratings, a market intelligence firm, Microsoft’s MSN Messenger and Windows Live Messenger were the second-biggest instant messaging services in the United States with a combined 28 million users last month. AOL ranked first with 47 million users and Yahoo ranked third with 22 million users.
Google’s Google Talk, which is based on an open standard, has only a fraction of the users, 811,000, of the top three IM companies. Windows Live Messenger comes second at 25 percent, while Yahoo is in third place with 19 percent of share.
Beta users will be able to send IMs, check to see who is online, share emoticons, view offline messages, and add users from both services to their contact lists. Though, voice chat is not on the list of features for the beta.
For using this feature, users need to download Windows Live Messenger Beta and Yahoo Messenger Beta. Third party applications like Gaim/Trillian cannot make use of this feature as of now. But they should be able to support this feature sometime later.