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Jeff Hester
November 9, 2001
Remember
when Microsoft and Netscape were battling in the browser wars? Seems like
ancient history now. But a new storm is rising in the instant messaging world.
You can see it in the flurry of upgrades and enhancements to all the big
players, with the smaller messengers fueling the fire. HereŒs a run-down of the
latest activity.Microsoft has
released MSN Messenger
4.5, incorporating the first of what they hope will be many .NET services.
These services allow third-parties to extend the functionality of Messenger by
adding alerts, news and other information in a Messenger tab. As for basic
messaging, they have one of the cleanest and easiest to use interfaces, but are
just catching up to the others in terms of basic functionality. Finally you can
group your friends! In an interesting twist, they have also release a new
product only available on Microsoft XP called Windows Messenger. This version is
compatible with MSN Messenger, but adds XP-specific features for video chat.
Not to be outdone, Yahoo Messenger 5.0
takes an already advanced IM product and adds IMVironments. These are a cute,
interactive variant of skins that can totally transform the IM interface.
TheyŒre actually kind of fun, but Yahoo sees them as an opportunity to make up
for lost ad revenue. Most of the first IMVironments are ad-free (thank God), but
look for that to change just as fast as the Yahoo ad reps can sell them. Look at
the new Monsters, Inc. IMVironment as a sign of things to come. I should mention
that Yahoo Messenger is also one of the only messengers to support multi-user
webcam sharing (Windows operating systems only).AOL is in the interesting position of owning
not one but two of the biggest IM products: AIM and ICQ. Not a lot
has changed recently with AIM, but with their built-in member base (every AOL
account holder is also considered an AIM user), they donŒt need to change much.
The venerable ICQ, on the other hand, has recently release a new version that
provides better firewall support (good news for corporate users) and a file
sharing option (can you say Napster?). Now they donŒt have an index of “shared
files” like Napster did (or Morpheus does), but could that be far behind.
Hmmmmm…Meanwhile, the “other” messengers keep the
pressure on the big guys. Odigo keeps signing distribution deals for
custom-branded versions of their fun, funky messenger. And they recently added
support for MSN Messenger. You can now use Odigo to chat with your friends on
Yahoo, AIM, ICQ and MSN.Trillian is thrilling lots of people
with their tidy little interoperable messenger. With tons of skins to chose
from, Trillian is truly the chameleon of the bunch, and gaining a lot of fans.
They add the ability to connect to IRC, too!Jabber, however is really the technology
to watch. Built atop XML, it allows incredible flexibility and probably has the
largest base of developers creating custom clients and extending the
functionality of this interoperable messenger. Keep it
up, guys!
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