In the first deal of its kind among Internet rivals, Yahoo and MSN Instant Messaging users from India and 14 other countries will be able to invite and chat with each other beginning Thursday.
These 15 countries account for over 80 per cent of MSN and Yahoo's combined user base of around 350 million. The other countries will be covered in a phased manner since they have language issues with IMs (for instance, Japan) that need to be sorted out.
IMs are free web-based services that allow users to chat in real time with other users worldwide. There are an estimated 400 million IM users all over the world. Of this user base, MSN has about 240 million while Yahoo accounts for around 110 million.
In India, MSN and Yahoo are together said to account for over 70 per cent of all IM users. Some experts predict that the IM traffic will exceed email traffic over the next one year.
The deal was supposed to have taken off last year, but there were engineering issues in getting both the IMs on the same network. Analysts say the deal will create a user base that will rival that of America Online (AOL), and create hurdles in Google's plan (Google Talk) for the IM space.
"Microsoft and Yahoo are publicly beta-testing inter-operability, enabling users of Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger to connect with each other. This inter-operability the first of its kind between two distinct, global consumer IM services will form the world's largest consumer IM community," confirms Jaspreet Bindra, country manager, MSN India.
A recent study by digital research firm ComScore notes that in terms of brands, the MSN Messenger application has the strongest penetration, with 61 per cent of IM users utilising it.
North America is the most competitive IM market, with MSN Messenger, AOL/Aim, and Yahoo Messenger each garnering between 27 per cent and 37 per cent of users.
