To start off, I've just started using Yahoo Messenger -- and I can definitely say two things about it: it's a discovery I had wish I made earlier, and I wish more people used it.
For me, I really don't like having too many applications running in the background of my computer, and that includes IM clients. (I had long ago given up on Trillian, the "all-in-one" client, because it's a buggy, crash-prone piece of crap that always breaks whenever AOL changes their protocol to ensure only authorized clients connect...) The majority of my friends happen to use AOL IM, so that's what I've been using as well. Recently though, I really wanted to IM HelenH, and so I bit the bullet and installed Yahoo IM.
Yahoo Messenger is just worlds better than AOL's product in so many ways -- much more responsive, a nicer interface that integrates with Yahoo itself, Outlook, and/or other PIMs, built-in videoconferencing, a status bar that tells you if a user is in the midst of typing a message, so you don't have to wait, wondering if they got your message, and of course, the IMVironments (personally not really my taste or style, but undoubtedly still very cool). Now if I could only convince the dozens of my AIM friends to switch, I could dump AIM for good... =)
Anyhow, on to the main point: I visited GrX small group tonight, and one of the guys there happened to be a main developer for the Yahoo IM client. So, we got into an interesting talk about IM in general, Yahoo in particular, and future directions that the product and industry was going to take.
It's fascinating stuff. One of the biggest issues is obviously interoperability between the various IM networks, AOL, Yahoo, MS, etc, which should obviously result in much value addition through the network effect. Basically, the players in the industry view AOL as the 800-pound gorilla of the IM world, the sole obstacle to a unified messaging standard -- a very us vs. them mentality... or at least that's the way it works in theory.
The reality is a bit different. Unlike other Internet services such as email and the web, Internet-wide IM (as opposed to system-specific means like zwrite) has largely been a commercial creation, rather than an academic one... it was mass-marketed first on AOL, and all the others later jumped on the bandwagon. So, most of the controlling interests -- and thus those responsible for setting the "standards" -- are commercial entities, rather than academic/nonprofit groups like the W3C for the web. And everyone's talking about "monetizing" IM -- making it a vehicle for ads, marketing, and whatnot. Which of course means it's in everyone's best interest to ensure as big of a user base as possible for their own client, so one gets more ad impressions and revenue.
So, even a baseline standard that just covers basic text messaging has been stalled. Basically, everyone thinks that interoperability is a good idea and they theorize about the "advantages" of a single account being able to talk to others, a la email, but no one wants to go out and do it, because everyone wants to come up with value-added features like the IMVironments first to draw users to their client and their network -- a potentially never-ending cycle of one-upsmanship. From a competition point of view, everyone else would like to see AOL open up, but really only so they could possibly convert the teeming AOL masses to use Yahoo/MSN/whatever based on the value-add stuff. And AOL is perfectly cognizant of that (underneath a superficial veneer of "privacy" and "security" issues), which explains its reluctance to join the interop bandwagon.
So in the meantime -- and probably for the foreseeable future -- people are stuck with running multiple clients, multiple accounts, or resorting to hacks like Trillian or Jabber. A depressing shame really, but getting a insider view for me shed some interesting light on how the Internet companies really operate/cooperate/compete these days.