Yahoo Mail offers instant messaging inside e mail
Yahoo Inc., the world's largest consumer e mail provider, on Monday said it has embedded instant messaging features inside its e mail program, bridging a generational divide that has confused many users.
Heavy Internet users, especially younger, Web savvy users of social networking sites or office workers, have long toggled between e-mail and instant messaging services.
But for more occasional users of consumer e mail services, the allure of instant messaging has remained far from obvious.
Consumers can now run the two programs in one Web browser. There is no need to download Yahoo Messenger software, a complication for users who are not technically inclined.
Each instant messaging dialogue will take place in a new conversation window within Yahoo Mail, allowing people to chat with multiple friends simultaneously, without leaving e mail.
John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail, said in a phone interview embedding instant messaging makes e mail "an even more social experience" by transforming how one communicates from a letter writing experience into a back and forth chat.
"We are hopefully bridging the gap between e mail users and IM users," Kremer said. "There is still a chunk of Yahoo Mail users who aren't using IM."
Yahoo is in effect moving the mountain of its 250 million Yahoo Mail users by eliminating the elusive technical distinctions that have separated the two modes of communication and limited the appeal of instant messaging among many users.
To guard against overwhelming its network, Yahoo plans to steadily upgrade all Yahoo Mail users in coming months.
Yahoo is not the first to blend the immediacy of instant message with the greater depth allowed by e mail communications: Google Inc. incorporates its Google Talk messaging system inside its G mail program, while Microsoft's e mail service alerts a user when e mail recipients are also on instant messaging. It then allows the user to send messages to either e mail or instant messaging recipients.
- 1 Dollar rally unstoppable
- 2 Markets nervous on return of short sellers
- 3 Lehman demise could end speculative raid on taxpayers
- 4 AIG in focus as financial meltdown spreads
- 5 Goldman and Morgan Stanley face biggest test
- 6 Lloyds says no comment on report of HBOS deal renegotiation
- 7 Rate cut to be passed on to savers
|
|
