X

MySpace launches IM client

MySpace launches IM client

Rafe Needleman Former Editor at Large
Rafe Needleman reviews mobile apps and products for fun, and picks startups apart when he gets bored. He has evaluated thousands of new companies, most of which have since gone out of business.
Rafe Needleman
MySpace just dropped its instant-messaging client [download] on the world, cleverly right after news of the AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) community site surfaced. It's like two lopsided crabs battling: AIM has one giant claw--an installed base of about 65 million IM users--and the tiny claw of its upcoming community site. And MySpace has 70 million personal pages on its community site and no IM audience. Yet.

Which crab will win? I suspect that more MySpace users will adopt MySpace IM than AIM users start AIM Pages, because it's much easier to install and run a small IM client than it is to start a community page from scratch.

The real bummer of this new IM client is that it is yet another system that doesn't interact with other similar networks, at least as far as I can tell. You can still use iMeem, Goowy, or Trillian [download] as a multi-IM client (hopefully they'll add MySpace support soon), but it's dumb that you have to. Imagine how much more useful the MySpace IM client--or any IM client--would be if all the buddies you already had could just pop right into it.

Found on: Mashable