One of my biggest pet-peeves about IM services are their proprietary protocols. If you’re on AIM/iChat and your friend is on something else (Yahoo, MSN, etc.) you’re hosed. Sure, there are a bunch of third-party IM clients available (like Adium) but they only interoperate for text – they won’t do audio or video chats.
It’s analogous to the HD vs. BluRay battles that are being waged over DVD formats right now. No one can agree to fully interoperate, so they’re taking their ball and going home.
Then there was a glimmer of hope that a truce had been reached in IM interoperability battle when TechCrunch’s Marshall Kirkpatrick reported that Microsoft and Yahoo agreed to make their IM services interoperate.
Read the rest of the story on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.
One of my biggest pet-peeves about IM services are their proprietary protocols. If you’re on AIM/iChat and your friend is on something else (Yahoo, MSN, etc.) you’re hosed. Sure, there are a bunch of third-party IM clients available (like Adium) but they only interoperate for text – they won’t do audio or video chats.
It’s analogous to the HD vs. BluRay battles that are being waged over DVD formats right now. No one can agree to fully interoperate, so they’re taking their ball and going home.
Then there was a glimmer of hope that a truce had been reached in IM interoperability battle when TechCrunch’s Marshall Kirkpatrick reported that Microsoft and Yahoo agreed to make their IM services interoperate.
Read the rest of the story on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.
