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Instant-messaging power users, rejoice: a barrier between two previously isolated realms of online chat is coming down.

A minor sidelight in the Yahoo-Google search ad deal announced Thursday is that the two companies "agreed to enable interoperability between their respective instant-messaging services, bringing easier and broader communication to users," the companies said. They're not sharing further details at this stage, but it's safe to bet that means people on Yahoo's IM network will be able to chat with those on Google's and vice-versa.

That's a big step in the right direction.

IM is a useful if sometimes intrusive tool, especially in this day and age when the Internet has tightened ties among co-workers, family, and friends. But people and companies don't always use the same networks, meaning that power users either must run multiple IM programs or try to bridge the divide with multiprotocol packages such as Trillian, Adium, Digsby, Kopete, or Pidgin.

IM today is similar to the early days of electronic mail, when users couldn't send messages between incompatible services such as AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe. Happily, the Internet's SMTP standard for e-mail emerged victorious, and now we only need one e-mail address (leaving aside the issue of personal vs. work identities, but that's a story for another day).

A power user's plight
I'm one of those heavy IM users tormented by today's situation. I have to talk to people on Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, and Google Talk. It's a pain having separate usernames for each service, but much worse is looking for software that centralizes IM for me.

I recognize I'm not a representative sample of the population at large. I have 797 buddies, many of them the same people represented on multiple services.

AOL said in a statement, in effect, that I am indeed an anomaly. "We have no evidence that interoperating with other consumer IM services is of great interest to AIM users," the company said.

But I've seen the problem worsen in the years I've used IM, and I believe mainstream people will encounter this problem with greater frequency as they change jobs, graduate from schools, meet new friends, and otherwise expand their social horizons.

Walled gardens
There are signs that these days are numbered. As Internet companies race to build rich communities and services on the Web, "walled gardens" have become widely disparaged as a relic.

Yahoo, for example, has pledged to expose formerly closed parts of its business through its Yahoo Open Strategy. And AOL is opening up AIM some, for example, letting Meebo and eBuddy link up.

But it'll take awhile to convince me that the IM walls are truly coming down.

For one thing, most of the progress to date has been through interoperability agreements that permit one service to link with another. That's like CompuServe building a custom gateway to translate and route e-mail from AOL--helpful, but symptomatic of the larger problem. The more IM services there are, the more gateways each service needs to work with the others, and more services are cropping up as companies such as MySpace, Skype, and Facebook add chat abilities.

What we really need is an IM communication standard. The obvious candidate is the XMPP protocol on which Google built its service but that none of the other major players use.

Google, unsurprisingly, shares my view. "The Web is based on open standards and protocols so users can use any browser on any operating system to visit any Web site. We think the open Web model ought to apply to IM," Seth Demsey, senior product manager for Google Talk, said in a statement.

Of course, it's a lot easier for underdogs to endorse standards, and Google has 1 percent share of IM users worldwide, according to ComScore figures in April.

Interoperability isn't easy
To be fair, IM interoperability isn't an easy technical problem to tackle for mammoth services with millions of users and messages. There also are privacy issues when one service is sharing data and buddy lists with another.

More complicated are higher-level features and services that IM companies have added atop basic text chat: status messages, avatars, file transfer, voice and video chat, message forwarding to mobile phones. I think there's still value to unifying basic text chat even if higher-level features remain fragmented.

Then, of course, there are business reasons to keep things separate. Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft all display ads on their services, and AOL is trying to make its service into a foundation on which programmers will create online applications. Opening up IM connections to other services means, for example, that someone using AIM might not see the ads displayed on the AIM software.

I can't help but wonder, though, if a unified IM landscape might spur faster growth and more extensive use of IM services--factors that mean those people using popular chat software could spend even more time gazing at ads.

Other interoperability deals
There are some other interoperability deals besides the Yahoo-Google one announced Thursday. Most notably, users of Microsoft and Yahoo instant-messenger services can link up and chat if they're using recent versions of the software.

And there could be more progress on this front: "Microsoft looks forward to continuing our interoperability reach to customers worldwide," Brian Hall, Microsoft's general manager of Windows Live, said in a statement.

Users of Apple iChat can link with AIM and Google.

Google's situation is complicated, in part because it has multiple IM options. The company offers Google Talk in two incarnations: client software that can be installed on Windows machines and a gadget that runs in a Web browser. Those versions can work with any XMPP-based chat service. (They're not popular, so you probably haven't heard of them.)

Google also has Gmail chat, which runs alongside the company's Web-based e-mail service. It can work with AIM.

So tell me: Am I an anomaly because I use multiple chat networks? And how do you solve your IM needs? Does a single IM client suffice, or do you use two to cover the bases? Send an e-mail to stephen.shankland@cnet.com or share your opinion in the feedback section below.

AOL plans to launch a new program called AIM Money on Tuesday that lets programmers write applications that run in the AOL Instant Messenger buddy list--and lets programmers get a cut of any resulting revenue.

The move is made possible through use of an open interface in AIM 6.8, another new development. Version 6.8 also includes "mini-applications" that run at the bottom of the AIM buddy list window; 150 new CBS radio stations in AOL Radio; and restoration of the ability to save and import buddy lists, a feature that helps move a to a new IM identity.

As the computing industry has discovered the possibilities of applications running on the Internet, companies are rushing to curry favor with programmers hoping those companies' online offerings. Other examples of the idea are Facebook, Google and other members of the OpenSocial consortium, and the Yahoo Open Strategy.

Ultimately, richer applications can mean more users, more activity, more advertising--though the more lucrative elements of the strategy is largely rhetorical than real at this stage for many. AIM, however, has a well-populated list of active users, unlike many start-ups.

AOL announced the interface in March with its Open AIM 2.0 developer program, which lets programmers write software such as the mini-applications that plug into AIM's own chat software, bots that can communicate with humans on the network, Web-based AIM interfaces, and software that show when AIM members are available online through the service.

The revenue for programmers comes through sharing money generated by an advertisement that can appear along with programs that use the new AIM features. AOL serves advertisements using its Platform-A ad network and pays developers through PayPal.

To use the AIM API (application programming interface), developers have to use two of five AIM elements. The ad is one. The other four are bundling the AIM browser toolbar; providing access to AIM Expressions that customize the AIM interface; displaying the AIM Dashboard start page; and displaying buddy info.

You can't take it with you, at least when it comes to your social graph.

But with a new beta version of Yahoo Messenger 9 software (download it for Windows) released Thursday, users have new options for reconstructing networks of friends and contacts they've built elsewhere.

The new beta of Yahoo Messenger 9 can help user invite contacts on AOL, Google's Gmail and Orkut, Microsoft's Hotmail, MySpace, and other online services to connect through the Yahoo service. Version 9 also includes a special group of all people in your Yahoo address book, helping to connect with contacts users may have stored elsewhere within Yahoo itself.

Also tying more deeply into the rest of Yahoo, the new beta can be used to reflect some other activities within the network--for example, when somebody spotlights a Web site of interest using Yahoo Buzz.

"We'll add more types of updates in the future," said product manager Sarah Bacon in a blog posting about the new beta.

Yahoo Messenger 9 is intended for use on Windows XP, in contrast to the more obviously named Yahoo Messenger for Vista (download it for Windows Vista). The final version of the Yahoo Messenger 9 is due in the third quarter, Yahoo said. The Mac equivalent is scheduled to be released by the end of the year.

Also new in the beta is a better interface for setting status messages--even if you're away from your IM software, Yahoo said. And links to games present in Yahoo Messenger 8 has made its way to version 9, so users can play pool, checkers, and others. However, only those with version 8.1 or later can play games with those using the version 9 beta, Yahoo said.

Yahoo Messenger's icon, a frighteningly happy face, reflects the fact that people have a whole section of their brains just for processing facial information. Yahoo is tapping into that visual cortex a little more directly with the new beta, which uses larger emoticons.

For further information, check Yahoo's blog about the new beta or a Messenger 9 beta demo video.

Good things happen to software publishers that listen to their users.

Fring, an aggressively growing company that builds a chat and cheap calling application for Symbian, iPhone, and Windows Mobile platforms, heeded a swell of feedback from iPod Touch users who had been using the pre-release iPhone version for jailbroken iPhones on the voiceless iPod Touch (review). On Friday, Fring announced a new pre-release version for the iPhone that also fixes a bug found when using the application on the iPod Touch.

Both sides were pleased that the initial experiment had worked, Fring reports, but not quite satisfied with the results.

It turns out that when applied to the iPod Touch, whose specifications were never considered when designing the iPhone version, Fring IM was a little rocky. Users who had tried it out couldn't see the text they'd punched in until after the message was already sent. The update, available through the application called Installer, should rectify the surprise oversight.

In a video tutorial on the Fring blog, iPod Touch users are reminded that the iPhone cousin is a silent device. Since there is no built-in microphone, Fring's international VoIP service is suspended on iPod Touches, leaving Fring for iPod Touch as a cross-platform IM service. There has been forum chatter about forging a workaround with the Touchmods microphone application, but forum contributors have attempted it with no luck.

As one contributor, blueridgebruce puts it, if Fring were to succeed to give the iPod Touch a voice, "iPhone users will love you...BUT...Touch users will worship you!"

A recent Gartner study estimates that 189 billion mobile messages have been sent by U.S. mobile-phone subscribers in 2007. It forecasts 301 billion mobile messages sent in 2008.

If correct, those figures would still account for only a small fraction of the 2.3 trillion messages to be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008 (a 19.6 percent increase from the 2007 total of 1.9 trillion messages). Asia is the biggest mobile-messaging market worldwide. China is in the lead, with approximately 560 billion SMS messages sent in 2007, followed by the Philippines' 430 billion and Japan's 190 billion.

The vast majority of the 189 billion mobile messages to be sent in the United States are expected to be SMS text messages, with an average use of about two SMS messages per U.S. subscriber per day. That is similar to the level of SMS activity in the United Kingdom in 2005 and still only at the global average of 2.1 SMS messages per day. The average number in the U.K. today is six SMS messages per day. Singapore is at 12, and the Philippines even at 15.

While the U.S. is still lagging behind Asia and Europe, its adoption of SMS is obviously accelerating. Gartner predicts that this will further propel mobile-payment solutions, as SMS will continue to be the dominant channel for mobile payments.

The analyst house believes that the number of consumers making payments using their mobile phones is set to soar from 32.9 million in 2008 to 103.9 million in 2011.

Despite the continued growth of SMS usage, however, Gartner expects growth rates to slow as direct mobile connections are becoming increasingly cannibalized by mobile-IM communities and social-network portals.

As I wrote before, there is huge potential for an elegant, seamless, cross-platform, and cross-media IM solution that enables the ideal of the "never-ending conversation."

It looks like Apple might again be the first mover here. The company is apparently developing a chat application for the iPhone, as revealed recently through a patent application that describes a "portable electronic device with a touch-screen display, comprising (a) means for displaying a set of messages exchanged between a user of the device and another person in a chronological order." That's basically the description of an UI for an iPhone IM application.

CNBC analyst Jim Cramer thinks that an iPhone IM application is going to be to instant messaging what the iPod was to the Walkman. And Ars Technica is not alone when it suspects that most of the iPhone users will probably value "a way to use instant messaging without using up their SMS message quota."

While the iPhone currently relies on SMS, Apple could add AIM, Jabber, or Twitter to the interface and thus become the de facto universal conversation enabler. However, building a native IM application (and adding third-party chat applications) could create conflicts with iPhone operators that might be concerned about losing potential SMS revenue, if users sidestep SMS by using IM programs.

We will soon find out. The momentum is building up toward a possible unveiling of the next-generation iPhone at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference on June 9.

At its iPhone SDK event last month, Apple touted an adaption of AOL's instant-messaging client for the iPhone. Now comes news of Apple's own patent application for a chat feature.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published the application, titled "Portable Electronic Device for Instant Messaging," on March 6--the very same day Apple was providing details on its software development kit for the iPhone, including AOL's test version of the first "official" native Web chat for the gadget.

The news of the Patent Office's action was first reported by the AppleInsider site late Monday.

From the patent application, which Apple filed in August 2007:

The GUI has a set of messages exchanged between a user of the device and another person. The set of messages (is) displayed in a chronological order. In response to detecting a scrolling gesture comprising a substantially vertical movement of a user contact with the touch-screen display, the display of messages (is) scrolled in accordance with a direction of the scrolling gesture.

The iPhone already offers SMS messaging.

As demonstrated last month, the AIM-on-iPhone application--which AOL developed in just two weeks--offers a buddy list and lets users easily toggle among multiple instant-messaging conversations with a finger swipe.

A Canadian start-up is offering a way to do local searches from within AIM or Live Messenger through a free service called Poynt.

Multipled Media's Poynt service lets you search for local businesses and view listings on a map all within the IM window. Last week, the company added the ability to search for movie listings and watch trailers.

It wasn't immediately obvious to me why I would want to do a local search in IM rather than toggle over to a Web browser, and an analyst agreed with me to some extent.

"It addresses a big audience that's using IM and has an instant-messaging window open all the time," said Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence. "It involves a little bit of a behavior change because people aren't used to doing that through an IM window, but there's an interesting opportunity."

But we both see a lot of potential for Poynt on mobile devices, and toward that end, the company is working to enable it on BlackBerry devices in mid-2008, according to John Lowe, chief executive of Multipled Media. On mobile devices the service will use GPS (Global Positioning System) to set your location.

I gave it a spin on my computer, locating Poynt as a contact on my AIM and Live Messenger services. Once you start communicating with Poynt there are some easy-to-follow commands for using the service. You set your location using a landmark, address, city, or ZIP code.

Then you can choose SuperPages in the U.S. and Yellow Pages in Canada and search by store name or store type, or movies to see current films by theater, genre, or title. You can also see show times, cast listings, and synopsis and search for movies playing on specific dates.

The listings can be displayed on a map that opens up in an adjacent interactive window in Live Messenger (although for some reason that feature wouldn't work for me) or in a separate browser window for AIM.

Multiplied Media aims to make money off sponsored listings and a revenue share from transactions, such as buying tickets online.

The company is working on an Apple widget for the Mac and functionality on the iPhone, as well as something for Facebook. Multiplied Media also plans to add user reviews, possibly through a partnership with a provider like Yelp, Lowe said.

Despite an interoperability agreement between Microsoft's and Yahoo's IM services, the Poynt service won't work on Yahoo Messenger until the company specifically develops the capability. However, both iChat and Gmail use the AIM functionality and so Poynt is available through those interfaces, the company said.

AOL is getting a lot of credit for "opening" its ubiquitous AIM instant-messaging software "to open source." However, like Microsoft did recently by revealing documentation to its APIs and protocols, all AOL has done here is open access to OSCAR protocols necessary to create open-source implementations.

This is great, but consider just how much more AOL could have done--and for its benefit--such as open-sourcing its instant-messaging server and client software.

Think about it. What revenue does AOL protect by keeping its IM software closed? Sure, there's advertising revenue from the obnoxious ads it sprays around the client, but that is thinking far too small.

The real money is in abundance. Or in "adoption-led markets," to borrow Sun Microsystems' nomenclature.

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The Web IM and chat company, Meebo, just rolled out some very interesting new features. First off, they have introduced a developer API for their Meebo Rooms product. This will allow people to integrate a Meebo Room into their own Web site. Meebo has said that this API will "...further accelerate the widespread adoption of Meebo rooms." Meebo is hoping that Web site owners will take this as an opportunity to build a community around their site.

Meebo also announced a big win for their new Meebo Network chat and advertising platform. They have signed five major partners, including Revision3, Piczo, RockYou, Social Project, and Tagged. Revision3 has a live feed featuring a variety of their shows. Next to the video is a live chat box where people can discuss the shows together. Meebo has said that they will be offering a "hassle-free revenue stream" on their partners' sites through targeted ad units.

This is going to be a great move for Meebo. They are expanding their reach and providing their services to new users. A lot of sites can benefit from real-time user interaction like this, and Meebo is right here to fulfill that need.