Brad Garlinghouse (L), vice president of Communications Products at Yahoo! Inc., and Blake Irving, corporate vice president of MSN Communication Services and Member Platform, announce a landmark interoperability agreement to connect users of their consumer instant messaging services on a global basis. Oct. 12, 2005.
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In a direct clash with AOL, Yahoo and MSN have launched a closed beta test today concerning the merger of the two networks.
The purpose is to allow consumers of the separate services to send messages to each other without having to go through the hassle of changing from platform to platform.
The initial rollout, which is two weeks behind the original schedule, will be offered in the U.S. plus eighteen other markets.
Not only will the new service offer users the ability to send messages but will also enable them to view the status of the messages, look at offline messages, and add new contacts across the platforms.
While AOL Instant Messenger had 47 unique users last month, MSN had 28 million, while Yahoo drew 22 million according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Together they're close to the size of AOL with a total of 43 million uniqe users.
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