About Yahoo Messenger Yahoo! Instant Messenger is a free instant messaging client. It was first published in March 1998 as Yahoo! Pager. It already came with essential features such as enabling internet users to communicate via short text messages with friends, family, and colleagues. Download Instant Messenger now! While the fundamental instant messaging feature has remained unchanged, many new exciting features have been gradually added throughout the years to make instant messaging much more fun and personalized. For example, you can now express all your emotions with 1,000’s of animated graphic icons by a Free Download. One important change was made in July 2006, which Yahoo! Messenger started to allows users to instantly connect in both the Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger) networks. See all the features of Yahoo Messenger 10 here. Other highly popular Yahoo! Messenger 10 features include: create buddy list with status message support, video calling, integration with updates from Flickr, Twitter, etc. and sharing music, video, and other files with friends. Download Yahoo! Messenger Today.

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About Instant Messenging

Instant messaging ("IM") is a form of direct text-based communication in real-time between two or more people using a PC or other device (such as a mobile phone or PDA), along with shared software clients. See full details here. IM generally falls under the term "online chat". IM is a collection of technologies used for real-time text-based communication between two or more participants over the Internet, or other types of networks. Of importance is that online chat and instant messaging differs from other technologies such as e-mail due to the perceived synchronicity of the communications by the users –chat happens in real-time. Some systems permit messages to be sent to people not currently 'logged on' (offline messages), thus removing some of the differences between IM and e-mail (often done by sending the message to the associated e-mail account). IM allows effective and efficient communication, allowing immediate receipt of acknowledgment or reply. In many cases instant messaging includes additional features which can make it even more popular. For example, users can see each other by using webcams, or talk directly for free over the Internet using a microphone and headphones or loudspeakers. Many client programs allow file transfers as well, although they are typically limited in the permissible file-size. It is typically possible to save a text conversation for later reference. Instant messages are often logged in a local message history, making it similar to the persistent nature of e-mails.

History of Instant Messenger

Instant messaging predates the Internet, first appearing on multi-user operating systems in the mid-1960s. Initially, some of these systems were used as notification systems for services like printing but quickly were used to facilitate communication with other users logged in to the same machine. As networks developed, the protocols spread with the networks. Some of these used a peer-to-peer protocol, while others required peers to connect to a server. During the Bulletin board system (BBS) phenomenon that peaked during the 1980s, some systems incorporated chat features which were similar to instant messaging; Freelancin' Roundtable was one prime example.

In the last half of the 1980s and into the early 1990s, the Quantum Link online service for Commodore 64 computers offered user-to-user messages between currently connected customers which they called "On-Line Messages", or "OLM" for short. Quantum Link's better-known later incarnation, America Online, offers an instant messaging service under the name "AOL Instant Messenger" or "AIM". While the Quantum Link service ran on a Commodore 64, using only the Commodore's PETSCII text-graphics, the screen was visually divided up into sections and OLMs would appear as a yellow bar saying "Message From:" and the name of the sender along with the message across the top of whatever the user was already doing, and presented a list of options for responding. As such, it could be considered a sort of GUI, albeit much more primitive than the later Unix, Windows and Macintosh based GUI IM programs. OLMs were what Q-Link called "Plus Services" meaning they charged an extra per-minute fee on top of the monthly Q-Link access costs.

Modern, Internet-wide, GUI-based messaging clients as they are known today, began to take off in the mid 1990s with PowWow, ICQ, and the aforementioned AOL Instant Messenger. Similar functionality was offered by CU-SeeMe in 1992; though primarily an audio/video chat link, users could also type messages to each other. AOL later acquired Mirabilis, the creators of ICQ; a few years later ICQ (now owned by AOL) was awarded two patents for instant messaging by the U.S. patent office. Meanwhile, other companies developed their own applications (Excite, MSN, Ubique, and Yahoo), each with its own proprietary protocol and client; users therefore had to run multiple client applications if they wished to use more than one of these networks. In 1998 IBM released IBM Lotus Sametime, a product based on technology acquired when IBM bought Haifa-based Ubique and Lexington-based Databeam. In 2000, an open source application and open standards-based protocol called Jabber was launched. The protocol was standardized under the name "Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol" (XMPP). XMPP servers could act as gateways to other IM protocols, reducing the need to run multiple clients. Multi-protocol clients can use any of the popular IM protocols by using additional local libraries for each protocol. IBM Lotus Sametime's November 2007 release added IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway support for XMPP. In the current era, social networking providers often offer IM capabilities. Many instant messaging services offer video calling features, Voice Over IP (VoIP) and web conferencing services. Web conferencing services can integrate both video calling and instant messaging capabilities. Some instant messaging companies are also offering desktop sharing, IP radio, and IPTV to the voice and video features. The term "Instant Messenger" is a service mark of Time Warner and may not be used in software not affiliated with AOL in the United States.

Each modern IM service generally provides its own client, either a separately installed piece of software, or a browser-based client. These typically only work with that company's service, although some allow limited function with other services. There are also third party client software applications that will connect with most of the major IM services. Standard free instant messaging applications offer functions like file transfer, contact lists, the ability to have simultaneous conversations etc. These may be all the functions that a small business needs but larger organizations will require more sophisticated applications that can work together. The solution to finding applications capable of this is to use enterprise versions of instant messaging applications.

There have been several attempts to create a unified standard for instant messaging. Most attempts at creating a unified standard for the major IM providers (AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft) have failed, and each continues to use its own proprietary protocol.