Yahoo Messenger, with 60 million worldwide users, just got a lot more interesting. Today at 6pm PST Yahoo is launching Yahoo Messenger 8.0 for Windows PCs and releasing a software development kit to allow third parties to create content plugins that users can add to their Yahoo IM. Plugins can be built using javascript, flash, or both.
There are two categories of plugins. Conversation Plugins interact with the chat environment itself. For example, with the event finder plugin, two people chatting can bring up a Yahoo map and find pegged restaurantes, venues, etc. to discuss them. Another plugin that I saw demo’d was the “avatars space” where users can interact in a virtual environment using avatars, pull in flickr photos and othe props, etc. The other type of plugins, Personal Plugins, pull content directly into the IM client itself. Users can add news, Yahoo 360, calendar plugins, etc. The idea is to pull core web services into the IM client, avoiding the need to open a browser.
The SDK can be accessed at developer.yahoo.com/messenger after 6 pm. Completed plugins are showcased at gallery.yahoo.com/messenger.
If only it was able to connect to the other networks, it would be Trillian 4.0
not to slam the IM…
but if yahoo could just get their da*mn yahoo chat and the associated chat room technology to function properly without the spambot issue… then they might have something worthwhile….
peace..
It’d also be nice if their Yahoo client for OS X wasn’t 4+ years old, using technology from Mac OS 8.x and with no features whatsoever. It’s buggy, crashy, limited, and very ugly for an OS X app. Sure, I end up using Adium because I’m on multiple networks anyway, but my friends on Yahoo often want to use features on there that were added YEARS ago on Windows, and will never see the light of day on the Mac.
Perhaps, given their open source-y leanings lately, they could just outsource the Yahoo client to some competent Mac developers and help them integrate the new features. Not likely, though…
You said it ‘other’ Thomas. I totally agree and was just going to say that.
Thomas & Thomas,
Please, why should they care about Macs… If they did update the app, it might take their 60 million userbase upto 60.001 million… maybe.
I can almost see the smoke coming from ears, lol.
If you want to blame anyone for the lack of support & commitment from application developers, you should blame Steve Jobs and his undying wish to keep OSX to a limited few.
I’m not developer but I am a sensible business man. If it was your money on the line and you had to allocate 200 hrs of developer time (@ $50/hr) which platform would you invest in?
*I’m no developer
I agree on the mac comment above. I wouldn’t spend a dime to develop for it. The user base is so small, there is absolutely no business incentive for investment.
-R
With Yahoo! opening up their client and AOL opening up theirs, it looks like we might start to see true interoperability between IM clients.
Its nice to have things like Trillian (which i absolutely love) and Adium, but if I can IM my friends and coworkers who use Yahoo Messenger from my AIM screen name, that would be fantastic.
I sure hope that happens one day,
bryan:
aol and yahoo’s definition of open isn’t quite up to par with rms’s. aol and yahoo think open means “the community can work for us, but we give nothing to the community.” maybe they should throw some money at gaim and adium, and then they might get some street cred for being open.
there is no cooperation in the forseeable future unless one of them gets bought by microsoft (aol more likely)
Opening up their client app is a cute trick, but doesn’t mean much. I think that there would be much more interest if they opened up the protocol. Then, people like gaim wouldn’t have to reverse engineer things the whole time…
Congratulations on techcrunch Japan. I have been reading you since you started, and I can’t tell you how amazing it is to see how successful the blog has become.
“I wouldn’t spend a dime to develop for it. The user base is so small, there is absolutely no business incentive for investment.”
I just don’t get this attitude. Are you saying Microsoft is losing money on Mac Office or that Adobe/Macromediahave mac units in the red? That’s nonsense. There are plenty of incentives to invest in a mac client which, by the way, can be done without a significant parallel development effort. Maybe the biggest reason being that “your” competitors are investing in it. MSN, AIM, Google/jabber, etc. have no trouble finding the time and talent to deliver a client. I understand if the client comes a month or two later, but if they neglect to deliver at all that’s really a shame.
If I guess it right, they are replicating the success of Firefox plugins. There’s probably same incentives for developers the same way it does for Yahoo Widget or Firefox.
I’m expecting more and more mashups popping up in the gallery.
Except that they haven’t really released a final version of Messenger 8. The page you link to still calls it a beta.
They are just trying to take the spotlight off of the half a dozen 3rd party chat clients, such as YmLite YaElite YaZak Gaim Trillian YaEh and a dozen more, that all are more stable, less bloated, have better spam filters, more boot resistant, and dont server adds like Yahoo!’s own client Yahoo Messenger. I’ll make the entire client, not just a plugin, thank you.
cpp.programmer:
I agree with you! It’s a diversionary tactic, but also a ride-the-bandwagon tactic: AOL did it, we have to do it too!
Oh, and please add Meetro (www.meetro.com) the list of “3rd party chat clients”
Although it’s not really a chat client. It’s an attempt at evolving the communication paradigm from chat and social networks to something new and beyond (so don’t feel bad if you don’t “get it”).
As for the comments on the Mac verison of the client, here’s something that some people need to consider:
The Mac market segment is not 1%, it’s more like 10% and growing. And the Windows market segment is not 99% but more like 80-85% and shrinking.
As someone else mentioned: the competitors seem to be investing money, and considering the size of Yahoo, money is NOT an issue for them (go check out their stats, even on Alexa they’re at the top)
Also, if you’re in the tech industry you’ll have realized by now that most of the “top dawgs” don’t run Windows, they run Mac OS X, and these are people who have much more influence on how things go and what things get written (read: blogs), than Joey’s-average-mom-who-got-her-$199-PC-at-Fry’s. Heh, sometimes I wonder what Bill G. runs on his desk…
And for Christ’s sake, you Mac-haters, why do you feel so threatened of the Mac and its users, if they’re only such a small minority?
The AOL is a subscription based developement kit (for the logins), so lame. Yahoo extentions ought to be better than that confining crap.
Another 3rd party chat concept to keep an eye on, meetro reminded me of , is http://www.meebo.com , A web based multi chat client. Last I looked it was a pager only, no chat rooms, but supported AOL Jabber MSN and Yahoo, confined in a web page!
Hi plz tell me how ti display the html pages directly in awindow not in a browser
“The Mac market segment is not 1%, it’s more like 10% and growing. And the Windows market segment is not 99% but more like 80-85% and shrinking.”
You can believe this all you want, but it doesn’t make it true. I’ll accept that the Mac segment is larger than 1%, but it has a good ways to go if it wants to hit 10% in anything beyond college students (which are not representative of the whole market, only a small segment of it).
In the business world, Macs have no hold. In the academic world, Macs have no hold, except where they’ve provided computers for free to k12 schools. In the server world…well, you get the idea.
My point: It’s not cost-effective to code for Macs unless you’re using a language that is cross-platform to begin with, like Java pr .Net/Mono.
will hi people just says hi
i tried my hands on it,..
n made a small plugin for spying invisible status..
http://www.tric...visible-status/
uts not dat good on the coding side.. bt still quite useful ..
Guter Aufstellungsort, ja!
A little delayed, heh, but what the heck:
@Jiggly Puff Must Die:
Granted, I should have specified the demographics more. I was not talking about server market share, indeed. I was also not talking about business-droid market share, companies that are locked in to a Microsoft only world and can’t budge, let alone are run by IT dweebs that are just that, IT dweebs, which have no skills other than the ablity to pay for and get a MCSE of sorts and thus move up to the corporate world not only themselves but their lack of skills and infest all business with lock-in solutions by Microsoft. Microsoft RULES there.
The demographic I was talking about were the home users, the consumers, since we were talking about consumer products. And in the home/consumer world it’s certainly my belief, which might be wrong, very much like yours could be, that the Mac has gained tremendous ground. Let me be more specific: I’m not talking about the home users with computers from 10 years ago, I’m talking about newer machines. I don’t know about you, but everyone around me is buying Macs, but certainly I didn’t base the numbers off of just that, but also from web statistics on various sites I have access to. Of course that can also be ‘biased’ in the sense that a Mac-only site won’t have many IE’s hitting it. I tried to take that into account. Anyways, like you said, it’s just opinion, these metrics are inevitably hard to measure even for professional accounting institutions, but don’t be surprised when the world turns all “white” and “brushed metal” on you
Cheers
Hello there.
watz up!!!!!!
NU1O
You have ads on your IM clients? Why do you use them?