eBuddy and Meebo made it clear that there is significant demand for instant messaging via the browser – many users work from computers where they can’t download software and so web based instant messaging is the only way they can use the service.
Microsoft has its own web messenger and Google’s Gtalk is integrated into Gmail and other properties. Yahoo has also experimented with web chat previously, with their integration of chat into their Yahoo Mail site.
This evening Yahoo will launch a dedicated site for Yahoo chat at webmessenger.yahoo.com. It should be live around 6 pm PST. They will also be publishing a screencast overview of the service a little later here.
Unlike most other web based chat services, Yahoo Web Messenger is built on Flash 9. At launch it will include only basic functionality, and is integrated with MSN Messenger (you can add Live/MSN Messenger contacts to your Yahoo friends list). Users can also add avatars and emoticons are supported. Yahoo says VOIP functionality may be added later.
It’s fine to use flash as long as its not too slow.
As for web messenger, so far so good.
bye bye meebo nice knowing you
very impressive, quick and responsive
What’s it with all these established behemoth Web 1.0 companies destroying the new guys….First Ebay/AuctionAds and now Yahoo/Meebo.
To Meebo’s credit they do support more than just Yahoo.
Like trillian for the web. I still dont understand the revenue model though.
Here is what I just wrote about this on CN (click my name)…
So?
Finally!
About Time!
Considering the huge banner inventory this creates, this would be much more profitable for yahoo than the messenger client.
Why is yahoo so slow to release such apps.
Better slow and quality than fast and crap like Google…I mean…GBeta.
As always, Microsoft is the loser in this area: both Yahoo’s and Google’s Web IM offerings are snappier than theirs.
And it supports Opera for a change!!
Way to to yahoo.
Mike@Emerging Earth: With Silverlight, it would only take MS two days to develop such an app with animations.
Wow….I have been looking forward for this for a long time….I thought they are a bit late on this. Just tried it out, works like a chartm…
Hey Michael,
I think it was just yesterday you came back from MIX and called Flex/Flash a “toy”. This Flex 2/Flash Player 9 app seems to work quite well.
Even with basic functionality it looks good.
M$ has a tendency to belittle anyone they want to compete with. This strategy works sometimes, but definitely not the right thing to do. Silverlight hardly has an adoption story, their open-source strategy is dubious, and finally – who can trust MS?
Flex/Flash is a ‘toy’ ‘coz its as easy to work with. I also like the fact that since its based on Flex/Flash, its going to work on all browsers for me.
Web messenger is just reinventing wheel. We got web chatroom, instant message ajax, etc…
What’s innovation for yahoo web messanger?
What’s new about besides graphics.
How can this not be integrated into MyYahoo??
Damn them. Its not available in India ( @yahoo.co.in).
OK… now why can’t they do this on Flash 8?
You forgot to tell that it is made with toys
Just like finance page (http://finance....ahoo.com/charts), maps (http://maps.yahoo.com/), etc., etc.
This article didn’t mention that the user has to be running Windows in order to use Microsoft’s Web Messenger. Very web friendly.
@trevo: The application was built with Flex, which relies on ActionScript 3 and requires the new virtual machine that is only available in Flash Player 9.
The code is JIT compiled, which is why this appliation runs so quickly.
There’s a showcase of Flex applications online at http://www.flex.org/showcase/
Mike
Umm… Yahoo’s had a yahoo web messenger for at least a year and a half – that’s not news.
ohh… meebo is still in the game. unless yahoo will incorporate icq and msn, then meebo is really “bye bye”.
Im just happy to see Yahoo! still has some programmers working for them, not just a big call center.
Rather its late or not, its a good sign
Screw messenger!
Yahoo is to be a serious player in the social networking space then it needs to buy my site Facebook for eight billion.
Passing on Facebook will be a mistake similar to what happened four years back when Yahoo did not buy Google for three billion. Instead it bought that junkie Mark Cuban’s site broadcast.com for five billion shortly after which it went brain dead like Cuban’s dad. Now how much is Google worth?
Yahoo must take steps to gain a real leadership position in social networking or risk not participating in what could be one of the leading sources of growth in the consumer Internet sector over the next five-plus years. It is this growth that leads me to estimate that in five years time Facebook will be worth at least 15 billion.
If that embarassment Semel does not buy Facebook then he should be fired. That is what happened to Viacom’s Freston after he did not buy MySpace. Having said that if I was a founder of MySpace Tom Anderson then I would have slit murdoch’s throat a long time ago for robbing me and my shareholders of billions of dollars. After buying MySpace for 580 mil News corp does a deal with Google for 900 mil. That was sheer daylight robbery. If Yahoo’s managers are not clueless they will buy Facebook
before it is too late.
This is also a great tinme to be a web 2.0 entrepreneur. Companies like CBS are lining up in the region of three billion for the next youtube. So there is a good chance to hit the lottery even if the product is junk. Often during boomtime people act stupidly like when Terra bought Lycos which is now dead and buried for $12.5 billion and @Home paid $7.2 billion buy for Excite.
Certainly people like Graham Spencer, Joe Kraus, Mark Van Haren, Bob Davis were my role models when I decided to hide online instead of hacking it out in a Mcjob in the real world. They created a junk startup Excite and hit a home run. Though the merger between Excite and @Home fell disastrously short of expectations these bums who took it easy in life laughed all the way to the bank. I hope to similarly be a role model to other net entrepreneurs.
mrkzuckerberg@yahoo.com
Blahh Flash. But interesting move. Kind of funny in a sense. As developers we moved away from runtimes to compiled code. Now we are in a sense moving back to runtimes – where the browser is the runtime.
i like it esp when the tabs at the main browser “marquees”… when there’s an alert… it’s cool.
Yay!
Don’t even bother,
perfectly blocked by our firewall ….
So does it do Jabber/XMPP?
just go to koolim.com, this has already been done by man, meebo, ebuddy, etc.
so whats going to happen to meebo, now that you can msn and yahoo on yahoo web IM.
While this appears to be a new way of doing it, Yahoo has had a web based version of their IM software (previously in Java) since at least 1999. It’s nice to see a pretty flash upgrade over the relatively ugly Java interface, but overall this isn’t anything they haven’t been doing for years. Really, most of the major IM systems have had web based versions for over half a decade if not longer
Meebo is still my fav
Interesting stats published by Center Networks
http://www.cent...essenger-market
Instant messaging is definitely a huge market!
Apparantly eBuddy is bigger than Meebo, in the category of IM aggregators.
They’ve had web based IM for many many years now so this is definitely nothing new. I don’t believe it was Flash based but I’ve used it for at least 2-3 years and likely longer.
still waiting for Trillian Web……
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Glad to see yahoo messenger on a browser.
But what about the zillion options that the messenger offered – like appearing invisible to particular contact(s), adding contact details for a person through messenger, customizing the chat history options and many more – can any one tell me where and when can i do all these ?