Comments on: Yahoo's encouraging words for IM standards

Executive newly in charge of the company's instant-messaging work appears open to an IM standard. That could help fix fragmentation problems in the world of online chat.

[gr3gg0r]

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 . . . .

[Shankland]

I've tried Pidgin and Digsby; I use the latter at present. I didn't care much for the former for various interface preference reasons; Digsby is buggy for me (memory leaks are the worst problem) but perhaps it will improve as it makes its way out of beta. Either way, multiprotocol IM client are a management pain for me; for many people I have two or three IM contact nicknames. And there likely are features I might actually want to use--VOIP, for example--that haven't necessarily made it out of the official chat clients.

[jjxn]

A problem with this is that you MUST have an account on each IM network.
With one federation network of IM, you only NEED one account (though you might want more, as it is with email).
And multi protocol clients usally does many protocol bad (or not very good), as a singel protocol client usally does that protocol good. Pidgin does XMPP (and thus Gtalk) badly...

[Banadux]

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.

[Shankland]

I used to use Trillian with manageable levels of disgruntlement (how come it says I'm idle all the time when I'm not?) until I had to expand to Google's network, which only is supported with the paid upgrade to Trillian Pro.

[masinick]

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.

[masinick]

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.

[JCPayne]

Yahoo is already getting too much SPAM from when they patched Microsoft IMer with theirs......

[TV James]

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.

[iertry]

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.

[jjxn]

Yes, this is true. To make it work with one account, you have to make the IM services to coöperate, federate in XMPP-lingo. If the different IM services use same coöperation protocol, your dream would be true.
I use transports in Jabber to talk to my friends in other IM networks. I still need to have an account in each network, but the transport loggs me in on those. Then I have access to all my friends from one Jabber client (I use Gajim, but there are other populare clients, like Bombus for mobiles with Java). I can also be logged into my Jabber account from many places at the same time. My MSN account will not be logged out, as it is the transport that is logged in to MSN. This can not be done with a multi protocol IM client.

[jag0]

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.

[i_made_this]

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.*

[wshun0]

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.

[jjxn]

SMS, MMS and mobile video will be protected by phone companies, as they make lots of money on them.
But you could download Bombus (bombus-im.org or http://bombus-im.org/builds/06/midp2.0z/Bombus.jad) to have it run on your mobile. Then you connect to transports, to have your MSN, ICQ etc friends in your phone. Works greate. Would work better if MSN and AOL start federate with others (GTalk already works).

[nyconyco]

> on the four main IM networks: AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google.

1st is QQ (in China). Wether, you like it or not, wether you consider it or not, wether you see it or not in western coutries, QQ is number one, worldwide!

Google is not a network, it is just a service in the network. The network is XMPP, or Jabber, and the only one that is an open standard, it is an IETF standard like TCP, IP, HTTP, SMTP, POP, IMAP, TLS/SSL, etc.

> 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.

The difference is :
- you can use your local, centralized, walled-garden account in MSN/WLM to talk to Y!M users, and/or use your local, centralized, walled-garden account in Y!M to talk to MSN/WLM users
- in GTalk, you have to enter your AIM account to be logged into the AIM walled-garden IM system : it is only an XMPP transport (or "gateway")
- AIM users can't log into XMPP network
- XMPP networkd users can log into any proprietary, legacy IM system, through transports (gateways)

SIP is not an equivalent of XMPP, SIMPLE is. SIP is for multimedia, SIMPLE is its extension to text and presence. Jingle extension to XMPP is more comparable to SIP, but far from it.

SIMPLE is difficult to federate, XMPP has already done it, worldwide. SIMPLE has 2 widely known implementations... that have embraced and extended it, thus becoming incompatible/non-interoperable : Microsoft Communications Server and IBM Lotus SameTime.

IM is one of the most fragmented electronic technologies is the world, w got to solve that problem.

Like there is one e-mail, there is only one IM, and it is XMPP. Now.

All the proprietary walled-garden networks (QQ, ICQ, AIM, MSN/WLM, Y!M, NateOn, Gadu-Gadu, MySpaceIM, Baidu Hi, C6, etc.) have to join the federated, worldwide network of XMPP, and add all their users to the open internet.

All businesses, administrations, associations have to adopt XMPP as their default server, like they have their own e-mail server.

http://nyco.wordpress.com
Nÿco

[Steven_D_Larson]

Going away from SIP would be the greatest mistake Yahoo could make. SIP is indeed a multimedia protocol. How long do you think before phone numbers become irrelevant an your email/sip address BECOMES YOUR PHONE NUMBER. Think about this... From an impact perspective, would it not be stupid to make your standard such that you would rule yourself out from being the 'identity' in telephony for the membership you own? The market strength Yahoo, Google, MSN, and the like have is numbers. If the company ('someone'@yahoo.com) is the eventual voice identity for it's member then market validity over the long term is assured.

Phone numbers are dead with the coming generation. It's just a matter of time.

Steve Larson
UC consultant

[jjxn]

Telephone numbers will be here long after you and I are dead. It will eventually go away, but then all telephones with numbers will also need to go away. You are to western (USA?) orientated. Telephone companies will not let SMS and MMS go away either, as they make lots of money on them.
And you can have same name in SIMPLE/SIP and in XMPP. But SIMPLE/SIP and XMPP has different goals, and solving slightly different problems. Knowing the differences, I will vote on XMPP for solving this problem.

[onejackk]

I am user of Yahoo messenger , I want to use multiple ID to chat communicate but do not want to merge all my friends list inot one, is this possible? Trilliam merges al lthe friends list into one, that is unacceptable to me