Yahoo has announced its online messenger [http://webmessenger.yahoo.com/ or simply http://web.im].
I took a test ride and must say that I am really impressed!!
A quick ride of the product::
Y! webmessenger is flash based product. Neatly executed- the UI & functionality is pretty much same as the desktop version [except for bells & whistles].
But what sucks is the ads [on the right side!]. I wish they had kept it clean [atleast for few days].
Most importantly, being from Yahoo!’s own factory, I expect the online version to do following:
- integrate with my desktop product – especially the history
- ability to send emails [ie.. y! mail] from the web IM.
- give me a widget to embed in my blog/site – so that users can directly interact with me/leave offline messages etc. – This is going to be the sexiest feature that Yahoo! can do.
But the basic question remains the same – will you use meebo [which offers other IMs as well?] or shift to yahoo? [if you only use y! messenger?] or GTalk?
Well, I will still use meebo. Not because its any better than y!, but because I am used to it! [and maybe because I want to login to multiple IM clients]
And most importantly, I want to use meebome client [very soon we will add that to NextBigWhat.com].
While GTalk’s flash avatar is really cool AND IS WAY TOO FAST, it lacks few very basic feature set. For e.g. any visitor to this site can’t initiate a conversation – which to me is the basic need for online IM widgets.
To sum up, Yahoo has done a good job of launching the online Y! IM client, but has a long long way to go in order to maintain it’s supremacy.
On a side note, I believe meebo guys are pretty smart to realize that the biggies will join the online IM war and that’s why they launched meebome – which has really taken meebo to a new level.
And given meebo’s strong user base and GTalk’s cool looking flash avatar,, I expect Yahoo to do more work [integrate with y! mail, give away cool widgets etc ]
What do you guys say? Yahoo ? Meebo? or GTalk?
tagged: webmessenger
Disclaimer: I work for Y!. views expressed are entirely mine.
