Google Talk + AIM = XMPP Federation!

It's been over three years since I last blogged about interop between AIM and Google Talk, when I announced the ability for Gmail users to log in to AIM and chat with their AIM buddies. While a step forward for users, who could now talk to twice as many people as before, the approach taken had several technical drawbacks.

For various reasons, the mechanism used to access AIM involved making Google Talk into a "multi-headed" client, where it logged in to the Talk network and the AIM network at the same time, but hid these details under the covers so that from the user standpoint it felt like a single messaging application. Unfortunately that wasn't always true; users needed to have both a Google and an AIM account; they had to remember their Google password and their AIM password, and various features, such as group chat between members of both networks, were technically impossible to implement with this approach.

That's why I'm glad to announce today that the AIM and Google Talk universes are now connected via XMPP Federation. Through the open XMPP protocol, the AIM and Google Talk servers can communicate directly with one another, eliminating the need for separate credentials and the multi-headed complexities of the past. Users can now sign into a single service, either AIM and Google Talk, and communicate with one another simply by adding the email address of their friends to their contact lists. (For AIM users, who historically have been identified by "screennames", the email address is simply screenname@aol.com).

For Google Talk users who previously used AIM integration within Gmail, there's one issue to be aware of. With our switch to use federation, Gmail will no longer log you into your AIM account, and so Gmail won't know who your AIM buddies are. Fortunately, AOL has created a simple web-based tool that will import your AIM buddies into your Gmail contact list, saving you the trouble of adding all your friends by hand.

I'm excited to see this day finally come, and am hopeful that this will lead to federation of all the world's IM services. We've achieved this for email; we should expect no less for IM.

AIM XMPP gateway is now live!

It wasn't as soon as I had hoped, but the AIM XMPP gateway I wrote about just over a year ago is now up and running at xmpp.oscar.aol.com. Anyone with an AIM or ICQ account can now access the AIM/ICQ network using their favorite XMPP client. For instructions on how to configure your client, click here. Some more information can also be found on Digg.

Right now you can only connect to the AIM/ICQ network using this gateway, there is no XMPP Federation. This means that you cannot talk to users on any other IM network at this time, including Google Talk. Hopefully AOL will add support for XMPP Federation in the near future.

Still, this is a welcome development. While at AOL, I worked on the initial design for this project, and it's good to see it live. Note that the gateway is still not officially launched, so it may be unavailable from time to time. 

Google Talk + AIM = Now!

It's been almost two whole years (and a new job and hometown) since I first blogged about Google Talk and AIM getting together, but today, it's ready to go! Starting this morning, we're rolling out AIM support to all Gmail accounts. You'll be able to link your AIM name to your Gmail account, and contact any of your AIM buddies directly from the Talk client inside Gmail.

As a longtime resident of the AIM universe, I never thought that I would give up my favorite AIM Lite for a web client. But the AIM integration in Gmail is that good. It's fast, easy to set up and use, and works on any computer. Best of all, it saves your IM sessions in Gmail, which makes it easy to remember a conversation from months ago. Bottom line: if you use Gmail and use AIM, you'll probably really enjoy the combined experience.

Some answers on what are likely to be FAQs:

• By default, your AIM buddies are displayed in the "most popular" order typically used in Gmail and Google Talk. To view them in alphabetical order (and enable the scrollbar), click on "Options" at the bottom of the contact list on the left side and choose "Top 250".
  
• You can also adjust the size of your contact list by clicking on "Options" and selecting between "Tiny", "Small", "Medium", and "Large".
• AIM users that are away or idle show up as yellow dots. The away message, if present, is displayed in the contact list.
  
• Your Gmail status message carries over to AIM, and vice versa.
  
• You can see AIM users' buddy icons, but setting your Gmail user avatar does not currently affect your own AIM icon.
• If you log into Gmail using HTTPS (as I mentioned here), your AIM session will be secured as well.
  
• This integration is not XMPP Federation. This was a contractual limitation. On the plus side, this means Gmail users don't need to manually add all their AIM friends to their Gmail contact list.
  
• The AIM implementation was developed on top of the Open AIM libraries. (It's a little weird knowing that the code my team wrote at AOL is now running in Google datacenters.)

Like it? Hate it? Favorite feature missing? Wish something was a little bit different? Send me a note, or drop a comment in the Gmail suggestion box.

Random IM of the Week

In my work on AIM and Google Talk, I get a lot of random people sending me messages. Some of the IMs are funny, some are bizarre, and more than a few are social engineering attempts. But one conversation I had last week was sufficiently random to be worth sharing.

sender: sir sender: please cancel your hamburger sender: ive asked you twice sir me: cancel sender: sir sender: dont play games with me sender: have you cancelled your hamburger? me: it was a cheeseburger sender: sir that will not do sender: cancel your hamburger now me: can it be a double hamburger? sender: yes sir the more the merrier sender: sir cancel it me: ok cancel my double hamburger then. sender: ASAP sender: sir i cannot cancel it for you sender: it is YOUR hamburger sender: you must do it me: ok. cancelled. sender: sir you and i both know much more effort is required a double hamburger sender: please refrain from playing games sender: sir me: right. my mistake. cancelled cancelled. sender: sir sender: please refrain sender: control yourself sender: no need to yell sender: calm down sender: im willing to negotiate sender: sir? sender: sir if you do not respond your are terminated i hope you realize sender: terminated sir me: my hamburger will be terminated? sender: no you sir will be terminated sender: sir sender: you are terminated due to lack of balls sender has signed off. me: but what about the hamburger?

Instant messaging: feature or product?

From VentureBeat: Instant messaging: feature or product?:

An interesting article about how instant messaging is increasingly being integrated into web applications. Just like web email largely replaced desktop email clients, a similar shift is starting to happen with instant messaging. Here's what the article has to say about Google Talk:

Gmail has already successfully integrated the company’s IM platform, GTalk, so that its users can chat while emailing. We’ve also heard rumors that GTalk will be integrated with applications such as Google Docs. AOL and Google also agreed to make their IMs interoperable, albeit in a roundabout way — and it looks like this will happen soon. Like [Microsoft software architect Ray] Ozzie, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been stressing the importance of mobile — like Microsoft, Google is integrating apps across platforms. What’s more, 3rd party sites such as Joost are integrating GTalk into their offerings.

Windows Live Messenger Customer Study

From Inside Windows Live Messenger: "RESULTS: What is your favorite messenger feature?"

What is your one favorite Messenger Feature?
* IM
* Video Call
* Sharing Folders
* Voice clips
* Emoticons
* Games and Activities
* OIM - Offline IM
* Nudge
* Display Picture and Personal Status Message that follow you
* Ability to log into Messenger with any email address

At first, I was surprised by some of these features near the top of the list. Turns out though that they aren't in any particular order.

Usage Stats From the Major IM Networks

Yesterday I saw a post from the Windows Live Messenger team where they said that they recently went over 30 million simultaneous users. Now, lots of statistics are offered up by the major IM networks when referring to their respective audiences, but the two that I like to focus on are simultaneous online users and IMs/day. Claims about "active users" or "total users" can be hard to compare, since it all depends on how you count. Simultaneous users and IMs are clear indications of how many users are stressing the system on a daily basis.

The WLM post got me interested on whether I could determine these numbers for all the major messaging services. A little Googling, and I was able to come up with numbers or reasonable estimates for most of the major services; I've included links to the sources I used. (Google does not release user numbers, so Gtalk is absent from this chart.) Here's the breakdown:

Service	Active Users	Max Simultaneous Users	Total IMs/day	Dominant Regions
Windows Live	204M (1/2007)	30M (1/2007)	5.7B (8/2006)	Europe, Latin America, East Asia
QQ	221M (9/2006)	20M (9/2006)	4B (estimate)	China, South Africa
AIM/AOL/ICQ/iChat	63M (3/2006)	10M (estimate)	2B (estimate)	US, Israel
Yahoo	60M (6/2006)	10M (estimate)	2B (estimate)	India, ?
Skype	50M (estimate)	9M (1/2007)	0.5B (estimate)	East Asia, Europe

I couldn't find exact data for some of these numbers, so extrapolated from what I did have. Readers, if you have recent public data for the estimated values (especially Yahoo), I'd be interested to see it.

Nevertheless, from these numbers, it looks like WLM is about as big as Yahoo+AOL+Skype combined. That's a formidable lead in a space that is fairly mature.

Google Talk + AIM = When?

I've seen a number of comments on the web regarding the previously announced interoperability plans between AIM and Google Talk, especially as the one-year anniversary of the announcement came up at the end of December. Nothing yet has made it into the hands of users, leading some to wonder whether it is actually going to happen. Having followed this effort closely both at AOL and now at Google, it's very interesting to read the various opinions from the outside.

On the Google side, I can simply refer to our official statement, and our stock answer, "We are working actively on integrating AIM access in Google Talk."

And as for a version of AIM that talks to Google users? There has been no comment whatsoever from AOL regarding such a client, so I guess we'll have to wait and see how important this is to AOL's new management team.

However, AOL also appears to be working on an XMPP gateway for AIM, which would allow XMPP/Jabber clients to access the AIM network using AIM screen names. Based on the public information, it seems that this should be available in the near future.

One way or another, looks like many believe 2007 is shaping up to be an exciting year.

IM Client Detection from the Web

Many of today's IM clients add things during installation so that they can be detected by web pages. Most of them use a fairly standard technique to do so; they install an ActiveX object, which can be detected by IE, and register a MIME type than can be detected by Firefox/Mozilla. I took a few minutes and put together a page that checks for all of these various object and types, and it's able to detect most of today's major IM clients fairly reliably. (Google Talk's detection mechanism doesn't allow detection from arbitrary web pages, and I couldn't find any info on ICQ). The result is displayed in a table like the one above (just an image, not live detection).

Try it out on your system, and please leave a comment if it didn't work or returned incorrect results for you (there are some known issues in Firefox). If you're curious about how it does its thing, please check out the source for the page - it's really quite simple once you know the CLSIDs and MIME types to look for.

Interesting statistic...

I took my Jetta in to the dealer the other day for a warranty issue, and while I was waiting in the showroom I noticed one of the Jettas on the floor was covered with various stickers. The stickers were all of the form "VW owners are XX% more/less likely to ___________", with the "more likely"s being generally positive things (e.g. work out, read a book) and the "less likely"s being negative things. Apparently VW surveyed its owners and created a marketing campaign around the results.

One particular sticker (above) grabbed my attention. Some other related "more likely"s:
"72% more likely to chat online" and "102% more likely to have watched video online".

Of course, this is a marketing campaign, so who knows how carefully the survey was conducted. Nevertheless, if you find factoids about VW users interesting, there is a version of the survey on the Web at http://thejettareport.com.

Offline messages in Google Talk

Yesterday, the Google Talk team turned on offline messages on the Talk service. It works pretty much how you would expect - if you send a message to someone who is marked as Offline in your Friends list, they will receive that message the next time they log in to Google Talk, or in their Gmail inbox. There is one restriction - in order to receive offline messages, the recipient must have chat history archiving enabled, and not be off-the-record. If this is not the case, you will get the typical error " is offline and can't receive messages right now" when trying to send the message.

For XMPP clients using the Google Talk network, this feature is implemented in accordance with XEP-0160 (Best Practices for Handling Offline Messages).

You can read more about using the offline messaging feature at this help page.

Customer satisfaction of the major IM networks...

J.D. Power, long known for its customer satisfaction surveys, has done a satisfaction survey of the major IM networks. The results are somewhat surprising (at least to me). Rankings on a 1000 point scale:

791 - Yahoo! Messenger
782 - MSN Messenger (includes WLM)
766 - Windows Messenger (preinstalled with XP)
762 - Instant Messaging Average
746 - Google Talk
744 - Trillian
743 - AIM/AOL Instant Messenger

Seeing Yahoo! in the top position was unexpected (I would have thought MSN), but it is also interesting how tightly grouped the rankings are. With a standard deviation of only 20 points, I wonder what the margin of error for the survey is. Also note the absence of ICQ and Skype.

Nevertheless, as we move toward a world with IM interoperability, customer satisfaction becomes much more important, since users will be able to choose the IM network they want to use. The eventual winners will be the networks that focus on the end-users, rather than short-term monetization.

The survey also reported these interesting factoids:

• The percentage of Internet users who use IM on a daily basis, 36%, was essentially unchanged from 2005, while text messaging usage continued to grow.
• IM replaced the use of traditional phones, to some degree, for almost 70% of IM users.

You can read more details on the survey at BigBlueBall.

Spending VC money wisely

Stopped by meebo's new (and still under construction) offices in Mountain View yesterday for a non-work-related visit. Like Google, meebo is all about products that focus on a great user experience - and it's enabled them to carve out a decent niche in a space with nontrivial barriers to adoption.

It doesn't seem to have gone to their heads though:
meebo registered users: 500,000+
meebo office signage cost: $.05 (possibly less)

First post

A warm welcome to readers of my previous blog, "Tales of a Running Man", about life at AOL and the AOL Instant Messenger system.

Now that I will be working for Google, I intend this new blog to be a similar look at life inside Google and the various projects I work on. Not sure exactly what I'll be allowed to post, but I should find out in employee orientation tomorrow...