July 7, 2008 11:03 AM PDT

Yahoo's encouraging words for IM standards

For more than a decade, the Internet has suffered from multiple incompatible communication standards for instant messaging. Now it looks like Yahoo, one of the major IM players, is open to breaking the logjam.

I'm a power user of IM who struggles to find software that supports chatting with people on the four main IM networks: AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google. Today's situation, for me at least, is like having to own four e-mail programs for different networks or four telephones for incompatible phone systems.

So I was encouraged by words from Scott Dietzen, Yahoo's new head of communications products including Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Mail. That promotion expanded his turf from his previous position at the helm of the Zimbra online e-mail software start-up that Yahoo acquired last year.

Zimbra, like Google and some other non-incumbent powers in the world of instant messaging, has used the open XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) standard for instant messaging. It's this standard that Dietzen apparently sees playing a broader role at Yahoo.

"I believe XMPP is the right platform through which to deliver interoperability with at least some of our partners," Dietzen said in an interview.

No doubt one of those partners would be Google. Generally, it's one of Yahoo's biggest rivals, but Google became a major partner in a search-ad deal with Yahoo announced in June. A sidelight to the deal was one line saying the companies would make their IM services interoperable. It's hard to say at this stage, though, how far Yahoo or others might go.

One-time deals or standards?
As I see it, there are two basic paths to IM interoperability. The first, which we've been on for some time, consists of one-off technology partnerships between various networks. For example, Microsoft and Yahoo's IM services now can link together, and the Google Web-based IM service built into Gmail works with AIM.

Interoperability problems are denying us a broader, richer world of real-time online communication.

But that approach only truly works as long as all networks set up partnerships with all other networks--a combinatorics nightmare given the arrival of new IM services from companies such as MySpace, Facebook, and eBay's Skype. That's where the second approach--using a standard--comes in handy.

E-mail previously had assorted closed communities including America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy, and the Internet itself. The standard prevalent on the latter network, SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) won out in the long run. It's got shortcomings--for example identity authentication issues that contribute to the spam and security problems--but those problems arguably are easier to fix with one standard than many.

Standards move notoriously slowly, of course, especially when compared with the rest of the technology industry. But the Internet has reached a scale where IM incompatibilities have major consequences that retard innovation, too. Standards might hamper the development of new IM features, but I believe interoperability problems are denying us a broader, richer world of real-time online communication.

XMPP or SIP?
So if the IM powers want to move to IM standards, the next question is which standard to use.

Here, too, Dietzen has an opinion. When I asked him what's been holding back IM interoperability, he had this to offer: "There are two competing potential standards, XMPP and...SIP. If I were betting, I'd bet on XMPP emerging as the likely framework for adoption."

SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol, grew out of the world of telephony and is more oriented toward multimedia than straight text.

But XMPP looks to have an inside track among the incumbent IM powers. For one thing, Yahoo's Zimbra software framework supports it, Dietzen said.

For another, Yahoo opted to use XMPP in its Yahoo Live experimental video service, according to Process One, a Parisian company that sells XMPP-based IM server software using the open-source ejabberd software.

And there are signs others might be interested, too. Earlier this year, AOL began experimenting with an XMPP interface to its AIM and ICQ networks for instant messaging.

So perhaps there's an end in sight for this particular Tower of Babel. Adopting a standard means the IM networks will have to let go of some control, but if done right, it also could mean instant messaging could become a more popular, active, and useful part of the Internet.

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Add a Comment (Log in or register) 18 comments (Page 1 of 2)
by gr3gg0r July 7, 2008 11:22 AM PDT
Pidgin anyone?? While I agree that interoperability of IM protocols would be a godsend, I haven't had this issue of running four different IM clients at once to stay in touch . . . I run Pidgin which works with Gmail, yahoo, msn, aol, icq, xmpp, and tons of others out of the box. With a plugin from google (http://code.google.com/p/pidgin-facebookchat/) you can use it with facebook chat. Seems like sufficient for me. Facebook and gmail for friends, yahoo for family, msn for work. So while i support the move towards a standard, this hasn't been as big of an issue for me as some on the internet have thought it to be . . . .
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by Banadux July 7, 2008 12:25 PM PDT
Trillian is a good option if you are on Windows based system. I've used it for a long time now and they do a pretty good job of supporting it.
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by masinick July 7, 2008 1:31 PM PDT
Kopete, part of the KDE project, has quite a few IM client protocols that you can set up. It has all of the ones that I need and is comparable to Pidgin in functionality. Both are along the lines of getting it done now.
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by masinick July 7, 2008 1:31 PM PDT
Kopete, part of the KDE project, has quite a few IM client protocols that you can set up. It has all of the ones that I need and is comparable to Pidgin in functionality. Both are along the lines of getting it done now.
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by JCPayne July 7, 2008 2:00 PM PDT
Yahoo is already getting too much SPAM from when they patched Microsoft IMer with theirs......
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by TV James July 7, 2008 2:00 PM PDT
Or Digsby. www.digsby.com Love it. At my fingertips, I'm logged into Gmail, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook and AIM. And its clean interface also shows me mail in 9 accounts. Hover any one of those to see the subject lines and open/mark as read/mark as spam/delete the emails. (Not all emails provide all buttons). Also I can view/update twitter as well.

My favorite part, though, is that you can combine multiple IM presences into a single contact point. So my brother Jeff might be online in three places, it only shows one online icon. When I click on him, I can decide which IM service I want to use to contact him.

If they were to add Grand Central and Skype, it would become more important to me than iTunes and Firefox.
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by iertry July 7, 2008 2:25 PM PDT
I want to be able to sign in using my microsoft account and talk to all my friends who use microsoft or gmail or yahoo etc at the same time. As far as I have figured out pidgin/adium that others are suggesting requires you to sign into different accounts to talk to your friends using them protocalls. E.G to talk to my microsoft friends i have to sign in using my ms passort. To talk to yahoo friends i have to sign in using yahoo.
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by jag0 July 7, 2008 5:08 PM PDT
Digsby is awesome for the simple fact that not only does it sign in with the all the major IM clients but you can also sign into your MySpace, Facebook _AND_ Twitter account.
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by i_made_this July 7, 2008 5:57 PM PDT
Everyone - including Yahoo! - knows the standard to adopt is XMPP. If they need "help from one of the big kids" as Yahoo has traditionally done, Google would be the perfect big kid; traditionally, Yahoo's big kid has been Microsoft - maybe it's time for a change. Microsoft's IM and webmail are about as mlousy as they come and they force IE on you in the spyware bargain.

Beside GTalk, Yahoo might worry about GMail taking market share from Yahoo's eternal BETA of a new "YMail" which is the most highly spammed mail service we've ever seen from Yahoo. So, Google could help Yahoo cut to the chase and license GMail's configuation to them as well as GTalk. I know it's against Yahoo's rules to take market share and to make money, but maybe this once they might consider Google as a partner (if Google's even willing to license their mail and talk).

Now, Yahoo must decide to put their money where their mouth is and adopt Firefox as their default browser, and Mozilla doesn't pay brib ..erm.. *injections of capital* like Microsoft's been doing with Yahoo for years - $$ to use IE-based products.

Here's a fun experiment - chat with or email to Yahoo Support, telling them you *LOVE their IM and webmail but it doesn't really work well with Firefox?* Then start crying and through your tears ask them how you can start using their INCREDIBLY wonderful services? *Do their IM and email better with IE or OPERA or FIREFOX or SAFARI?*

Don't believe me. Try it for yourself and see. I hope this policy has changed - last I did it three months ago, the answer was *wellll.. actually.. YIM works by far the best with IE, Yahoo Mail too but IE's not really required for our email.*
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by wshun0 July 7, 2008 10:40 PM PDT
The article misses another key driving force: CELL PHONE. Sooner or latter SMS, MMS, mobile video conference, IM have to merge together - we do not want too many similar programmes running in the little screen on our cellphone at the same time - and it needs a standard.
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