Microsoft Corp made its long-anticipated entrance into the instant messaging software market yesterday with MSN Messenger Service, a free service it claimed would offer access to the greatest number of internet users and integrate more closely with other Microsoft communications tools. Microsoft is using its Hotmail acquisition as a pull to get users onto the system, enabling them to instantly exchange online messages with the 40 million users of Hotmail’s web-based email service. It also enables users to communicate with others using the rival AOL Instant Messenger for the first time, Microsoft said. The MSN Messenger Service became available for download at midnight last night.
America Online Inc currently dominates the IM marketplace, and has built up 40 million registered users of its Buddy Lists and AIM AOL Instant Messaging Services, along with 38 million more users for ICQ, the technology it acquired from Mirabilis Ltd in June 1998. Without even including Yahoo! Inc, which launched its first instant messaging services in March 1998, more messages are now being sent than the 500 million letters sent each day via the US Post Office.
Originally, Microsoft had hoped to come to market with an IM offering in August last year. It acquired the base technology in February 1998 from Flash Communications Inc, and said at the time it planned to incorporate it into its NetMeeting collaboration software product and the next version of Microsoft Exchange. Flash, a Boston, Massachusetts-based firm, had got its software to the beta testing stage. But delays set in when Microsoft decided to integrate the software with Hotmail, which it acquired a month before Flash in January 1998. Users can now search for an add contacts from either Hotmail or AOL AIM. It has also tightly integrated the service with the Internet Explorer 5 browser, Outlook Express 5, and NetMeeting.
AOL countered that Microsoft’s compatibility with AIM was limited. Users need to have both programs, and AOL users would not be notified when MSN users went on line, it said. They would also not be able to sign up MSN users to buddy lists without signing up for the MSN product. And, said AOL, its users would need to enter their AIM password to allow MSN Messenger to communicate with them, something it likened to hacking.
Also yesterday, Microsoft announced that it was backing an effort to create an industry standard for instant messaging and online presence protocols. It is supporting the Internet Engineering Task Force’s IMPP Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol Working Group, formed at the end of last year, to develop an interoperable architecture for simple instant messaging and presence detection. CMGI Inc’s Activerse Inc, Infoseek Corp, PeopleLink Inc and Tribal Voice Inc (currently being sued by AOL because of its use of the term buddy list) are also supporting the effort. Microsoft said it would use the resulting protocols in future versions of its Messenger Service software.
The application takes up 320Kb of space, making it the smallest of the currently available IM clients, according to Microsoft. It can be downloaded in three minutes using a 28.8Kbps line. It then runs in the background, alerting users when a contact comes on line or when a message is sent. It also includes blocking mechanisms and an invisible mode which lets users appear to be offline even when there are online.
Application vendors are beginning to show signs of interest in instant messaging technology as a new means of business communication. FaceTime Inc claims to be the first to integrate the technology into its Message Exchange e-commerce application for customer support. It works with AOL, Netscape and the new Microsoft product, and incorporates push technology at the server end to help guide users to web pages. Mehdi Maghsoodnia, VP of engineering and network operations at FaceTime says that people have not yet recognized that the future phone system is instant messaging. It’s only a matter of time before e-mail and voicemail are integrated behind an IM client. Instant messaging is both more scalable than the web and offers a far greater chance of usage, adoption and retention than the web, he said. á
