Meebo has been widely used as a convenient way to access all of the major IM networks from any computer with an Internet connection, since the web-based Ajax client doesn’t require any installation of software, thus making it like webmail - easy to access and use. They seem to have a pretty good privacy policy as well, which is good, since you must sign in with credentials (login/password) from whatever network you want to use; encryption is also used to prevent sniffing of passwords.

The new MeeboMe service seems quite useful - in certain situations. If you visit the site, you’ll see that once the website owner signs up, a flash-based chat widget can be placed on their site. Anytime someone visits the site and the widget loads, they show up as a visitor on the website owner’s Meebo IM list. By default, the chat widget is “on”, and the visitor can thus send messages to the website owner (if they’re online) in real-time, offering any comments or feedback they might have. Additionally, (and this could be sort of scary for first-time visitors), the website owner can initiate a conversation with any visitor! For most people, this would be surprising and possibly downright freakish, to see a website “talking back” to them.

For most websites, I don’t see this being really useful. After all, most visitors don’t really have anything to say to the owner/operator/designer of a website, and in fact, most mainstream users won’t even want to participate in any sort of online discussion. However, as I said before, in certain situations it could be very useful. For example, if you’re offering some sort of service or operating a store, having this chat widget could enable real-time live support for whatever products or service being offered. It could be provided either as an alternative or a alongside phone support, and the upside is that you wouldn’t need to implement your own system for the chat - Meebo has done it all for you, and set up time is next to nothing.

Currently, the chat widget doesn’t allow for communication between visitors at a website - it only allows for communication between the visitor at the website owner. However, this might be added in the future, but it’s worth it to know that Gabbly, a neat Ajax app, has provided this functionality for a little while, and could also be used in a similar manner to MeeboMe. It even provides you with the proper code needed to automatically embed the Gabbly application on your website, though some users might find the addition of any chat application on a website (by default) to be annoying and detrimental.

I was wrong

I’ll be the first to admit that I recently said that I thought this wouldn’t happen - I was quite wrong, and I guess I’m still surprised at it. Though it had been announced many months prior, I remained skeptical until today.

In retrospect, it looks like a good move on Microsoft and Yahoo’s part. After years of trying to overtake AOL’s AIM by themselves, I think they’ve realized that it can only be done through a combined effort. Obviously, some ad-revenue sharing terms have been agreed upon, as I pointed out before - there’s just no way they would have joined hands this peacefully.

This move also had more to do than just with wanting to overtake AIM. In recent years, Skype has taken off fast - Skype is pretty much the program to use for VoIP, and their offer of free calls to the US/Canada at least until the end of this year (along with other promotions) is only going to increase their market share. While Skype and Microsoft or Yahoo’s clients are certainly not mutually exclusive, I’m willing to bet execs at both of the companies involved in today’s deal were at least somewhat worried about Skype eating into their user base. (Both Microsoft and Yahoo’s clients offer some form of VoIP.)

So how does this translate?

For the end user, it doesn’t mean too much, other than not having to download another client to communicate with your buddies on the other network, of course. But, many people will be quick to point out that their have already been other clients offering this inter-network compatibility for some time. (GAIM, Trillian, Jabber clients etc.) These people will say that because of this, today’s announcement means little.

Perhaps to them, but to the vast majority of the online world, (who don’t use GAIM, Trillian, et al.) this does mean quite a bit, provided Microsoft and Yahoo do their best to promote this new functionality. As I mentioned before, the end user won’t have to care too much about the changes, but the implicit effects it’ll have could be huge. Instant messenging is one area that is particularly susceptible to the network effect, and this new, larger user base will certainly help Microsoft and Yahoo in the end.

While you may not have any contacts on MSN or Yahoo (or both), that doesn’t mean this merger isn’t important. (I personally only use MSN and then only when I’m free to - I turn it off during studying or when I’m trying to concentrate because I think they cause me to waste time, and promote constant short-term attention, but that’s another story.) The combined user base of this new IM network is going to be a huge source of ad revenue, one that hopes to grow even more due to the snowball effect.

I also wonder how the makers of AIM will respond to this. Years ago, they purchased ICQ and quietly made it the two compatible, but did little to promote this. Once the worldwide leader in active users, ICQ has since fallen, now having fewer active users than either AIM, MSN or Yahoo.

Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger is one of the first of the “Live” services to come out of beta - most of them are still in the development or testing stage, but it’s all very clear that these services are targeted at those offered by Google or Yahoo. Windows Live Messenger hopes to also serve as a starting point for promoting some of these services as they go “Live”. So far, Windows Live Today (a news/portal site) is promoted, as well as Windows Live Favorites, Microsoft’s take on online bookmarking. Integration with MSN Spaces (to be rebranded as Windows Live Spaces) is also present, as it was on previous versions of MSN Messenger. None of these services offer anything particularly ground-breaking, and there are better alternatives out there. (Windows Live Favourites doesn’t even come close to del.icio.us.)

But one good addition to Live Messenger is the new filesharing feature. Previously, if you wanted to share a file, you had to send it over MSN Messenger to your buddy; all too often, transfers were slow and often dropped out, and there was also the “back and forth” where different versions of the same file had to be sent back and forth as it was updated. With the new version, you can share a file with a buddy, and it creates a folder where this shared version is stored; any changes made by either side will cause the shared versions to be updated, so synchronization is a breeze. Offline messenging was also finally added.

The Yahoo announcement was perhaps a bit bigger of a deal, since they also announced they would be releasing a developer kit to allow for creation of plugins. Yahoo seems to be better than Microsoft in the area of supporting developers, and so they didn’t disappoint with their Messenger 8.0. The messenger is also heavily integrated with Yahoo’s services, such as their new 360 service, which looks like it’s centered around blogging. Though I mainly use MSN Messenger (since almost all my contacts are on it), Yahoo’s Messenger looks better because of the plugin support.

All of this is of course, intended to get users to use more web services, in the hopes of increasing ad revenue. That’s the big thing on the Internet nowadays, creating a service that people will use and like, thus creating an incentive for them to return to your site, view ads, and maybe click on a few of them.