Yahoo is upgrading Yahoo Messenger,

Yahoo is upgrading Yahoo Messenger, by making a move into VoIP and expanding their feature set, making for a more robust and more simplified offering for people who do a lot of things with one another online.

Sort of.

Rather than go out and offer full telephone like capabilities and thus encroach into the territory of their two important partners in the DSL biz here in the USA (SBC and Verizon) Yahoo is taking an approach of let’s be the most feature rich online Voice Messenger tool that conforms with accepted standards that can more easily integrate with other already existing service providers by using SIP at the core of the application, without going the way of Skype Out or Skype In.

Basically Yahoo wants to deliver the most robust online only messenger product and hopes to leapfrog AOL’s AIM and MSN’s Messenger offerings. They plan on doing that by integrating a really neat photo sharing component, adding voice mail and blogging tools as well as simplifying some things in an almost Disney or Apple like way.

Yahoo Follows Microsoft With SIP in The Messenger

But before I go out and praise YAHOO, I have to first reveal some facts.

In one way the new Yahoo Messenger is actually only going out and offering what Microsoft already provided with Windows (NOT MSN) Messenger a few years back, for that application was able to use a SIP stack that was part of Windows XP. Yahoo’s addition of SIP is a great move, but they’re not the first. That said, the new SIP based Yahoo Messenger in theory can become a front end at some point down the road to any SIP provider, should Yahoo open up the API as a way to get some basic notification (you’ve got voicemail) or to be a presence indicator for that service.

While this is not a direction Yahoo is going today, talks with some folks close to those in discussions with Yahoo before my briefing indicated that Yahoo had discussed and explained what would be in the new offering, and that the idea was not too far fetched.

Yahoo Voice Improved

Obviously Yahoo is well aware of the changing landscape of IM with Voice capability. Skype has come out of nowhere over the past 18 months to garner millions of users who use IM and Skype Voice for one to one online communications and likely is seeing some duplication of users, or possibly even a drop off of some who like me used to use Yahoo Messenger much more, to chat and talk with some colleagues, but as Skype has become more ubiquitous I’ve seen those migrate over. To counter this Yahoo has embedded a better and enhanced wideband and narrowband codec hoping to do battle with the Global IP Sound codecs that makes Skype sound so good, especially among broadband users. That’s a good move.

In an attempt to win some Skype users over to YM, Yahoo has also introduced free voice mail, something Skype charges for. It’s a great idea and when you combine the idea of SIP with Yahoo voice mail in theory one could point their SIP based carriers voice mail to go to that mail box, at some point down the road. That can be done because each Yahoo user will have a SIP address.

By adding Voice Mail to Yahoo Messenger clickers (I don’t want to use the word callers) whose session attempt doesn’t reach their intended recipient they can leave a message. Unlike Skype, Yahoo has chosen to give this service away. And unlike Skype the feature set is actually more robust. The messages are stored and delivered to the Yahoo Messenger user. Once a VoiceMail message is received the user is notified in Messenger.

Yahoo Sharing

This may be the strongest feature of the new YM. First it allows true two way interaction and is a means to share select sets of data with the first two being contact cards and photos. I imagine that eventually this will include entertainment content like video and entertainment.

While the contact card sharing feature is strong and is designed to do what Plaxo already does, the photo sharing is the really hot feature. With the new feature I can see what the person I’m showing the photos to online is looking at or vice versa.

In an era of jump ahead of the speaker during presentations, this feature is really neat. Also, the way it takes a thumbnail and uses it was very cool, meaning you only use the file transfer feature to send your buddy the photo in full size when you have to.

Since the Photo sharing can work with any Photo Library type service I’d expect to see Yahoo out peddling partnerships with all the photo services people use, thus making Yahoo Messenger the collaborative tool rather than the storage service.

As a means to build adoption rates, this feature may be more of a reason why people adopt YM. Not only can you share the photos, but you can talk about them too with the VoIP feature. That will make grandma and distant relatives happy when it comes to seeing how the grandchildren or family are growing up. But I see the business market also having use for it also.

For the real estate market this is a huge opportunity. Provide the home buyer with photos and then talk with them. Same for car salesmen who understand how to use the Internet. Snap photos of a rare Aston Martin, show the person whose interested across the country the photos. I only wish Yahoo had gone to the next level and enabled the same to be done with video.

Yahoo Adds Spam Guard, Avitars and Pictures

Capitalizing on their already solid, but not perfect SPAMGUARD—but what Spam filter is perfect, Yahoo is adding enhanced SPIM protection to their IM client. As far as I know Yahoo is the first to offer this. That said, the incidence of SPIM I’ve gotten on any IM client other than AIM is almost non existent, so while this is a great protective insurance like move, it will only come into play if SPIM becomes a bigger issue than it is today.

The Avatars and Pictures with animation are pretty neat too, and almost Disney like. They can be customized. I actually think though that back in the day 7th Level had some technology like this and while it’s cool, to those of us who have been around for a while, it’s not exactly breakthrough. Ex Pink Floyd sideman Scott Page actually tried peddling something else like it back in 1999 but Yahoo has been successful in bringing the idea to fruition.

Blogging The Yahoo Way

Yahoo has also integrated blogging into Yahoo Messenger. While only working today with their Yahoo 360 service, during the briefing there was discussion about opening it up to other blogging tools such as TypePad, Moveable Type and even competitor Google’s Blogger service via a tab button. Like everyone else, Yahoo wants to capitalize on the blogging market. While the ship has sailed for some, it hasn’t in the IM space and Yahoo’s only real threat will be from MSN and AIM, both of whom are also heading in the same direction.

File Transfer and Easy Archive of Sessions

Yahoo has made file transfer simple with drag and drop by showing multiple thumbnails. Clearly Yahoo is taking a graphic, almost Mac like approach, in simplification here, going well beyond the drag and drop feature of MSN Messenger. Point to Yahoo on this move.

Summary

I walked away from the briefing feeling Yahoo wants to be open and work with as many other companies as they can in the communications space and that they are moving towards a more unified type of communications experience for their mostly consumer audience. While I’m not happy I can’t get my business mail notification versus the Yahoo Mail account swapped out, something Pulver Communicator will already let me do, I won’t let the fact that the paying customer is getting less than a freeloader diminish my enthusiasm and ability to sense a good thing when I see and hear it.

Yahoo’s new and improved messenger product is just that. Something good for mass market consumers and more advanced users of the Internet. What it lacks is available elsewhere, and while us early adoptive types want those features included now, we also know where we can find what Yahoo chose not to include.

“We are committed to providing a world-class IM experience for consumers, and we will continue to enhance and extend voice services as a core component of Yahoo! Messenger.” stated Brad Garlinghouse, vice president, Communications Products, Yahoo! Inc. “Talking to your computer no longer means you are crazy, it means you are smart, because you are taking advantage of innovative technology and a unique combination of features that only Yahoo! Messenger offers.”

My only real disappointment though is with the lack of a new Mac version. Something which Yahoo executives acknowledge and will likely have out down the road. Given that every blogger and expert at the briefing was using a Mac laptop, I think that presented a very compelling argument to Yahoo management, that the Mac is making a serious come back with people who used to be very PC. What Yahoo’s team does about that, and more importantly when, is a whole other matter as Yahoo, like any business only has so much in the way of resources to attack each opportunity and the bottom line still matters.

So in my mind I’ll upgrade my PC version. Sadly though since I use the PC about 5 percent of the time, I won’t get to experience that often the positive benefits of the new Yahoo Messenger. It’s a clear step up and sounds good too.