Yahoo has announced that it is set to allow users to embed, in its instant messaging service, programs that help them collaborate on activities ranging from calendar scheduling to watching videos or even trading commodities.
The company said it was introducing a handier way for tens of millions of users of Yahoo Messenger to share a variety of web services, media or software created by independent software developers, or by Yahoo itself.
Yahoo Messenger aims to make it easier for users of its instant text and voice communications services to collaborate over the Web by sharing applications simultaneously. For example, a Yahoo Messenger user will be able to open up a version of Yahoo Calendar to friends and collectively plan to meet up by sharing local entertainment listings and maps while conversing over the messaging system.
The undertaking is a variation on a theme by many of the biggest Internet companies, including Microsoft, with its upcoming offer Windows Vista, Google, Time Warner’s AOL and eBay’s Skype text, phone and video communications service.
Yahoo’s effort builds on the growing popularity of ‘widgets’, or mini-applications designed to work on computer desktops. Yahoo is making it possible for developers of thousands of these mini-applications to be incorporated into instant messaging services instead of sitting static on PCs.
“The one reason that widgets haven’t struck a home run is that they aren’t collaborative - requiring the consumer to do too much fiddling to install and run them,” said Jeff Bonforte, director in charge of Yahoo’s instant messaging products.
Yahoo has signed up a variety of software developers to embed mini-applications within Yahoo Messenger to help users to simultaneously share Web programs. Initial partners include 30 Boxes, a calendar-sharing site that competes with Google Calendar, commodities trading site Hedgestreet.com and Pando.com, which offers a service for sharing videos or other files via BitTorrent technology. More than 100 mini-programs will be available initially.
Initially, the service will be customized for use in 15 languages and 19 of the 21 markets in Europe, Asia and the Americas where Yahoo Messenger is now targeted, Bonforte said. Yahoo plans to rely increasingly on independent software developers to create new features and services that can run on Messenger, instead of relying solely on internal innovations.
