Yahoo!, MSN instant messaging services growing fast

NEW YORK: While America Online Inc.'s popular instant messaging applications

remain dominant, Yahoo! Inc.'s messenger and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN messenger

service have become the fastest growing applications, according to a Jupiter

Media Metrix report.

Microsoft's and Yahoo's applications have each accumulated about half the

number of users as AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), one of the Dulles, Va.-based

company's applications.

Instant messaging, which allows users to chat real-time, is one of the issues

US regulators are looking into as part of their review of AOL's $112 billion

merger with No. 2 US cable provider Time Warner Inc.

AOL's rivals have called on the company to open up its applications so that

users of other services, such as Yahoo!'s messenger, can swap real-time messages

with users of AOL's AIM or ICQ applications.

The world's largest Internet services company has committed to

interoperability once privacy and security concerns have been addressed.

Yahoo Messenger, which was launched in March 1998, grew to 10.6 million users

in August. MSN Messenger Service, which was launched in July 1999, grew to 10.3

million users in August.

In contrast, AIM grew to 21.5 million users in August from 18.1 million users

a year-ago. The service was launched in May 1997. Its ICQ application had 9.1

million users in August, down from 10.4 million a year-earlier.

"Instant-messaging applications are proving to be very popular with

consumers," said Doug McFarland, president, Media Metrix. "But their

different features and lack of interoperability cause users, especially heavy

users, to adopt more than one brand in order to keep in touch with all their

friends and colleagues."

(C) Reuters Limited 2000.