Yahoo and MSN are working to bridge he gap between their two instant messengers making them compatible with each other. For years now Trellian has offered an instant messenger that integrates with other IMs, but this is a first time that the actual IM services have chosen to work together.
This is something that should have happened a long time ago. Imagine if your Sprint cell phone could only call other sprint customers. Or that your T-Mobile cell phone would not allow you to call your friends that use Verizon. We’d be carrying multiple cell phones just to be able to take calls from all our friends and family.
This is the mess that instant messengers have been in. Some people have messenger accounts for MSN, Yahoo, AOL, GoogleTalk and ICQ. Trellian had been about the only way to combine all of these into one service, but the downside to that was you had to register for an IM account at EACH one.
Hopefully this Yahoo / MSN collaboration will result in more IM services working together to do the same. Let me use the IM service I like best, but don’t keep me from chatting with someone who doesn’t have my particular IM. This is a big step in the right direction!