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David vs Goliath: The 2.0 version
February 6, 2008
Silly me.
On Thursday, I spent a good part of the day with software entrepreneurs from Israel. The overwhelming majority were part of bootstrap operations but each had come up with an intriguing take--their One Big Idea, if you will--on how to make life easier for computer users. And if there was one common theme it was a shared belief that they had found a better, more satisfying approach to personal computing.
Maybe that tack one day will spill over to inform the tactics and strategies pursued by the sales and marketing sharpies who run most tech companies these days. That's the optimist in me talking. The pessimist counters that the incumbent powers-that-be will innovate on behalf of customers only when forced by new rivals. That's not always the case, but it is when the subject is instant messaging.
Users still run into old barriers erected between instant-messaging services as an axis of interests has forged distinct two camps: Since late last year, Google users have been able to sign onto AOL Instant Messenger through Gmail (Google owns 5 percent of AOL). For their part, Yahoo and Microsoft IM users have been able to communicate with each other since July 2006. After then, the electronic-communications highway runs into a brick wall. When it comes to instant messaging, AOL doesn't talk with Microsoft, Microsoft doesn't talk with Google, and Google doesn't talk with Yahoo.
So much for putting computer users front and center.
OK, I'm being snarky, but who doesn't understand this has to change? The status quo is analogous to the early days of the phone business when you couldn't call between phone providers. I've got to believe we've learned a few things in the intervening century since then.
"It really has to go the way e-mail goes," Dan Casey, a product manager at Microsoft for Windows Live, told me. "We all rationally believe that."
He's right. Unless the walls come down, you can forget about IM ever approximating that sort of ubiquity. So why keep clinging to an outdated conception? In a word, myopia. This Cyber Gang of Four still views instant messaging as a moneymaking platform for advertising and other stuff they can piggyback onto their IM clients.
For a while, I thought services like Trillian on the PC or Adium on the Macintosh could exploit the desire among so many people for cross-service interoperability. As of late last year, there were nearly 35 million Trillian downloads from our sister site CNET Download.com. Still, that's a veritable drop in the IM bucket. Besides, why should users need to sacrifice features or a preferred interface in order to send instant messages to someone using a different client?
Time Warner boss Jeffrey Bewkes has bigger things on his mind these days than the future of instant messaging. He has to revive a company still feeling the aftereffects of a disastrous merger with America Online. Meanwhile the snarling between Microsoft (maybe soon "Microsoft-Yahoo") and Google gets worse. Translation: I wouldn't be overly confident of an IM breakthrough any time soon. That's not to say I'm not still hoping.
On a scale of 1 to 10--with 10 being the equivalent of a naked wrestling match with Mothra--this obviously is not the most urgent computer problem the tech industry ever had to resolve. But it is as annoying as it is eminently fixable.
Biography
Charles Cooper is CNET News.com's executive editor of commentary.
See more CNET content tagged:
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Public IM Connectivity allows users of OCS 2005 and 2007 to IM with AOL, Yahoo!, and MSN/Live Messenger, all while having a single identity.
Federation allows users of one company's IM servers to contact users of another company's IM servers, but uses OCS 2005 and OCS 2007.
I would argue that there is some benefit to a walled gardens approach with IM. Look at how SMTP, an open standard, has become polluted with SPAM. If there were a completely open and interoperable IM standard, I would expect we would see the same sort of pollution within IM.
Incidentally, IM spammers don't use IM clients per se... they have their own scripts and proggies to fire off with.
/P
I find instant messaging to be very intrusive. It pings away at you
when you are working on a project.
Send a regular email. It isn't reliant on proprietary IM systems and
you can set your client to check frequently if needed.
/P
The latest versions of Yahoo Messenger, AIM, MSN Live messenger have become monsters of commercials. Check ICQ 6 for example: you can't even get rid of the ad in the text showing window! (and I'm not talking about the lower part which always had an Ad). Live Messenger? ads all over the damn window!
I'll take Pidgin any day over those freaking clients. At least I can connect to all of the IM services without tons of ads!
Other IM programs always seem to start slower..., then say things like signing in..., then they give me a blank window for a while..., and then finally display my buddy list. All on the exact same network.
Also, if I remember Pidgin can freely access services that Trillian still charges for.
I have accounts with 'the big four' plus Skype. The combination of those two apps allow me to do what I need to do. Keep in touch and be available. For my business and personal life.
What I would like to see is more advancement in web integration of these technologies. A true 'home page' a person can use with all his desktop tools, messaging and file shares all in one easy web style interface.
Users you invite to your page can drag and drop pictures and comments, fire up the webcam, text your cell, send you files and work with live collaboration on documents.
Now that would be the ultimate messaging app. Let's get it done!
others.