Yahoo working on a universal IM app

Last Friday Valleywag got a nice little scoop on a new Yahoo project called MyM that looks to be joining the universal chat space. The service is currently invite only, but already from the sign-up page it appears to be joining several Web services together. Included are instant messaging clients like AIM and MSN, along with social services like MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, and Friendster. Interestingly enough, there's also a checkbox for Meebo, which Valleywag is reporting will let Meebo users with their various client passwords authenticate logins using one master password, although there's no word with any tie-ins of Meebo's recently released API to make use of things like games and other assorted Web apps.

Nobody outside of a small group of Yahoo employees seems to have gotten their hands on MyM thus far, but Valleywag's report pegs it as similar to Meebo with a single browser window interface for chats and a buddy list.

From a competitive aspect, if Yahoo is trying to play nice with Meebo, the product might be going in a different direction. Considering Yahoo's already got a Web-based version of its Messenger platform that plays nice with MSN Messenger, my guess is that MyM will eventually resemble something a little closer to Flock's people toolbar to let you ping people in all their various online locations while going about your usual browsing activities. The other big thing on my mind is what Yahoo can bring to the table that Meebo, and others like Flick.im, KoolIM, and Mundu Messenger don't already have.

In the meantime, you can sign up to test MyM here. We'll try to get our hands on it shortly.