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Spanish Internet media company Terra Lycos SA said on Thursday it will bring together several instant messaging services it offers globally by year-end into a new service built on IBM Corp.'s technology.
Terra Lycos said the first version of the new service, which will be built on IBM's real-time messaging software Lotus Sametime, will be free but the company plans to launch paid versions of the service with added features and better performance next year.
"This is not an entry (into the messaging market) but more of a move toward a standard global platform to offer standard quality of services, lower cost of operation and all the other reasons people standardize," said Michael Coddington, senior director of access and communications at Terra Lycos.
Terra Lycos currently offers several separate versions of IM services in the United States, Europe and Latin America.
The consumer instant messaging market is dominated by America Online, the Internet arm of AOL Time Warner Inc., with its AIM and ICQ services.
Rivals Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN also offer messaging services.
News source: Reuters - Terra Lycos to Start New Messaging Service with IBM
Terra Lycos said the first version of the new service, which will be built on IBM's real-time messaging software Lotus Sametime, will be free but the company plans to launch paid versions of the service with added features and better performance next year.
"This is not an entry (into the messaging market) but more of a move toward a standard global platform to offer standard quality of services, lower cost of operation and all the other reasons people standardize," said Michael Coddington, senior director of access and communications at Terra Lycos.
Terra Lycos currently offers several separate versions of IM services in the United States, Europe and Latin America.
The consumer instant messaging market is dominated by America Online, the Internet arm of AOL Time Warner Inc., with its AIM and ICQ services.
Rivals Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN also offer messaging services.
News source: Reuters - Terra Lycos to Start New Messaging Service with IBM
While many in the industry and government have called for AOL's services to be interoperable, or allow users of those services chat with users of other services, there has not yet been much progress on that front.
AOL said this summer it was putting on hold efforts to let users of its messaging services chat with users of other services through a direct connection and would instead seek ways of achieving interoperability by hosting other messaging services on its servers. For example, it is already hosting Apple Computer Inc.'s iChat.
Earlier this week, however, AOL said it was letting users of its AIM service chat real-time with users of its ICQ service as part of a test.
Terra Lycos said its new messaging service will allow users to chat with users of other services that use the SIMPLE protocol that the Internet Engineering Task Force standards board has supported.
Microsoft has also endorsed the SIMPLE protocol but Coddington said Terra Lycos was in discussions with all the industry's players to see who the new service would be interoperable with when it launches.
"Client interoperability remains a different level, and in theory, that would be a good move, but these services are good at shutting out services," said Michael Gartenberg, a research director at Jupiter Research.
Shares of Terra Lycos closed up 19 cents, or 4.14 percent, at $4.78 on the Nasdaq.
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