MSN, Yahoo connect their IMs

Microsoft and Yahoo have started the messaging game (read advertising game) by providing interoperability between the consumer versions of their instant-messaging (IM) clients. Facing threats from third-party applications, like Trillian and Skype, the two tech giants will claim 44% of the instant messaging market. The move creates a global community of nearly 350 million accounts with its beta service available globally in 15 localized languages.

Both the companies will offer limited public testing that enables users of Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger with Voice to connect to each other through either service. Users can register to sign up in a limited public beta at Yahoo or Microsoft. The process had been expected to be available in the second quarter of this year. Microsoft already has enabled IM interoperability between Live Communications Server (LCS), its enterprise unified messaging software, and IM clients from Yahoo and American Online, as well as its own Windows Live Messenger. Business customers that have purchased LCS and Office Communicator, the client interface for LCS, can connect to all of those IM clients.

Who is next ?

Microsoft is also planning to strike a similar deal to make Windows Live Messenger interoperate with AOL's consumer IM client. This deal, if happens would determine the future of advertising leadership in instant messaging. As AOL is leading the market in instant messaging with distant No.2 (MSN) and No.3 (Yahoo), it would be appropriate for others to be interoperable with AOL but on the other hand Google-AOL deal indicates that the two companies are already working to make their respective instant messaging services interoperate (Google paid $1 billion for a 5 % stake). Another school of thought relates the interoperability gimmick of traditional IMs to get back their users who were once actively using their IM services, to come back. In the six years since AOL, Yahoo! and MSN were not allowing IM traffic from each other on their respective networks, the entire IM landscape has changed. These days it is the success of Jabber’s continued success in the Enterprise IM space and Google’s recent entry into the consumer IM market space that collectively eroded the market share of active IM users away from the "traditional" IM players that finally gave a reason for some of the "traditional" IM competitors to find a way to work together. Coming days will be gold mine for the IMs who can interoperate and encash their ad-network.