My Next Live Messenger Will Be from Yahoo

Microsoft's 10 has a video demo of Yahoo Messenger from the International Consumer Electronics Show. Separately, Yahoo has its own demo of the software.

If the software works as well as it demos, Yahoo has created a showcase Vista application, leveraging Windows Presentation Foundation. The visuals are stunning and utilize WPF in ways other developers should look at. For example, users can drag open IM chat windows together to combine them into a single window with separate tabs for each conversation.

The contrast to Windows Live Messenger 8.1 Beta is impressive. Yahoo built a new product specifically for Windows Vista, while Microsoft extended the existing code base. Where Yahoo Messenger uses translucent windows, like Vista's Aero user interface, Windows Live Messenger 8.1 is visually like the drab Windows Basic UI.

Yahoo also is increasing integration with its other products and, judging from the demo, with better execution than Microsoft. Windows Live Messenger puts a little mark, or what Microsoft calls a gleam, beside buddies that update their Windows Live Spaces. Yahoo uses more identifiable markers, such as a Flickr logo for buddies posting new photos.

The integration, leveraging WPF, extends to sharing content with other Yahoo services. Users can pull photos from Flickr or their computers and drop them in an IM window to share them with buddies. Leveraging WPF, the photos are dynamically resizable. Yahoo Instant Messenger for Windows Vista also allows easy sharing of music, movies and other files.

What would be really useful would be extension of presence indicators to Windows Live, seeing as how there is some federation between Microsoft and Yahoo messaging networks. So, the Yahoo user could see a gleam when his Windows Live buddy updates Spaces. Yahoo could use some better mechanism for importing Live Messenger buddies, too.

I'll be ditching Windows Live Messenger as soon as Yahoo's Vista IM is available, even in beta. Federation means I can chat with Live Messenger buddies from Yahoo's software.

People spend a whole lot of time using three product categories: Web browsers, e-mail clients and IM. Yahoo is right to leverage Vista for improving the user experience. The company plans a Windows Vista sidebar gadget for IM; users won't have to open the full client. Some advice for Yahoo: Create gadgets for podcasts, RSS and e-mail, tapped from Yahoo services.

My question: Where is something comparable from Microsoft, not just for instant messaging but other Live services? The company practically beats developers over the head with lists of Windows Vista and WPF benefits. If they're so great, where are the showcase Microsoft products? This week, Microsoft started banging the marketing drum about the Windows "Wow." Where is the wow from Live services like Messenger or Spaces?

If any company should be showcasing what Vista can do, it should be Microsoft. Windows Ultimate Extras like DreamScene are visually compelling, but hardly practical. Microsoft should extend core products and services. The default link to Vista's Welcome Center offers links leading to Microsoft products that are same ol', same ol', rather than wow.

These product's Vista appeal reminds me of computer game "Splat," which I played in college. In my college days, the computer was the university's mainframe, which we interacted with by keyboard terminal and paper printout. I sometimes played this game where the user would jump from an airplane over Pluto and pull the parachute ripcord in time to keep from going splat. Funny thing, no matter what the altitude, the user would splat, because Pluto has no atmosphere. Microsoft could do better than splat.

As I write, Apple CEO Steve Job is on stage giving his Macworld keynote in San Francisco. He'll wow the crowd with dazzling new products, some of which will be a whole lot less innovative than his presentation makes them seem. Meanwhile, products like Yahoo Instant Messenger for Windows Vista, which dramatically change the user experience, will be ignored.