That's Your AIM in My GTalk
It is amazing that we still have major instant messaging platforms that don't talk to one another. Yahoo and Microsoft got their two systems to work with each other more than a year ago, but AOL is still working on interoperability issues with those two.
Context & Ripple Effects
The federation wave started in earnest two years ago, when Microsoft and Yahoo announced plans to link their IM networks — a handshake that went live and has now been running for more than a year. AOL, meanwhile, spent that window rebuilding its client instead, rolling out a major AIM makeover in late 2006 while leaving its walls up.
That leaves the largest North American consumer IM network as the holdout against the very interoperability its rivals treat as table stakes, even as AOL chases advertising scale elsewhere — it just bought Quigo to compete with Google and Yahoo on ads. Network size is AIM's moat; federation is what drains it.
First-order effects
- AIM users stay locked inside AOL's walled network while Microsoft and Yahoo contacts reach each other directly, making AIM the least connected of the major clients.
- AOL faces immediate pressure to finish interop work with both rivals or watch its network-size advantage erode into a liability.
Second-order effects
- If AOL joins the federation late, it negotiates from weakness — the Microsoft-Yahoo pair sets the terms for cross-network traffic that AIM needs more than they do.
- Google Talk's presence in this conversation raises the stakes: an open-standards entrant benefits most when the big closed networks are forced to interconnect.
Third-order effects
- Consumer messaging is trending from walled-garden lock-in toward federated networks where the client, not the protocol, is the product — a shift that punishes whoever holds out longest.
- Interoperability is edging from technical feature toward competitive obligation, the kind regulators eventually scrutinize when one player controls the dominant social graph.
The trend: Consumer instant messaging is consolidating around federated interop between major networks, with each holdout's delay converting its user base from an asset into a negotiating disadvantage.