Yahoo upgrades instant messenger
Things are heating up in competition for instant messaging market share. Monday saw the release of Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger, and on the same day Yahoo delivered an upgraded version of its IM client, while also providing tools to third party developers to write "plug-ins," or add-on tools, for the software. Clearly, Yahoo hopes that opening up its IM tool will help it stay ahead in the IM arms race.

Elinor Mills at ZDNet reports that the web portal and its partners have already released upwards of 20 plug-ins for the client that allow users to monitor eBay auctions, share calendars, and listen to music while chatting, among other things. With messeging tools taking on more functionality, notably adding voice messaging (or VoIP) capability, the IM client may now have usurped the web browser as the Internet's most contested turf. For some, however, piling all of these new features into chat software is too much. "I don't know about you, but I'd prefer my core Web services in my Web browser," writes John Paczkowski at Good Morning Silicon Valley. "Adding them to an instant messaging client just seems to be needlessly mucking things up."
Posted by Oliver Ryan 9:20 AM 0 Comments comment | Add a Comment

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.