Microsoft and Yahoo! bridge IM communities

Oct 14, 2005: Instant messaging has evolved into a valuable tool for businesses and consumers, however there has always been a great divide between the various services.

MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and AOL to name but a few, have all had success with their own flavours of the software, however interconnectivity has never really been on the cards. So if your friends use Yahoo while you prefer MSN then one of you has to compromise and sign up to the other service if you want to chat. This often forces the use of two clients simultaneously if contact networks are in place, or at very least setting up yet another email account.

Well, soon that will cease to be a problem - for MSN and Yahoo messenger users anyway. Yahoo! and Microsoft have announced a landmark agreement to connect their instant messaging (IM) users to each other globally.

This is an industry first for interoperability that will see users of both systems interacting with each other and at 275 million clients, forming what is expected to be the largest free consumer IM community in the world.

Users will be able to exchange messages, emoticons, add contacts from either service and see when those contacts are online. "This is truly a turning point for the IM industry, and we believe our agreement with Microsoft will help usher in a new era of IP communications." said Terry Semel, ceo of Yahoo! inc.

Some are talking up the agreement as a pre-emptive strike against Google, who is yet to dig its claws into the IM arena. Strategic battle plan or not, the agreement is certain to please consumers who have been requesting the feature for a while.

Microsoft and Yahoo! intend to introduce the new interconnectivity capabilities to both services globally during the second quarter of 2006.

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