Reader Bernard tipped me that Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0 Beta was recently launched. I investigated further and found out that Yahoo! Messenger users can now talk users on Windows Live Messenger, formerly known as MSN Messenger. Unfortunately… Malaysian users won’t be able to make use of that beta feature till a little later.

Microsoft’s joint press release with Yahoo! had this line in it:

Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger with Voice users in the U.S. and more than 15 international markets can register to participate in the IM interoperability beta by visiting Yahoo! at http://messenger.yahoo.com or Microsoft at http://ideas.live.com. The new beta program will be available in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada (English and French3), China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States (English and Spanish).

Malaysia’s not on that list. The two services are interoperable now but it’s still in a limited beta test. Hopefully it’ll be expanded to include more countries soon.

I’m really glad that Yahoo! has included the cross-network interoperability for Mac users when many other services would just leave Mac users out in the cold when they launch a new service, especially if it’s in beta. At least, I think so. It doesn’t explicitly say Mac users can enjoy the feature too on the website. But adding my friends from MSN to my Yahoo! contact list works, although they only appear offline.

No such luck with Microsoft Messenger for Mac. You can’t add your Yahoo! friends and I’m pretty sure that the cross-network messaging is only a feature for their Windows-platform users. Bleh, Windoze.

Further reading

• Yahoo! and Microsoft Bridge Global Instant Messaging Communities (Official press release)
• IM interoperability: not just a dream anymore (Techcrunch)
• YM! Mac messenger beta now able to send to Windows Live Messenger directly (Trillian discussion forums, via digg)

Update 15 July

It looks like the chat interoperability is working for some Malaysian users. I’ve heard some of my friends say it works for them and reader XF2 says it works for him. Also, maybe you need to explicitly join the beta programme to activate the service.