Search Ask Leo!:

YouTube - Patron Perks - Books - Ask - About

Technology in terms you understand. Sign up for the Confident Computing newsletter for weekly solutions to make your life easier. Click here and get The Ask Leo! Guide to Staying Safe on the Internet — FREE Edition as my thank you for subscribing!

Can I use more than one instant messaging service using only one client?

by

There are a couple of programs that allow you to use more than one instant messaging service using only one client.

Macs have Fire, an instant messaging engine that captures in
one place several different others (Yahoo, MSN, etc.). Is
there something like that out there for PC users?

Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that there are
definitely a couple of tools to do exactly what you want.

The bad news is that it might technically not be legal.

Become a Patron of Ask Leo! and go ad-free!

There are two popular packages that will do what you want:

  • Trillian, a commercial product for Windows with a free
    version that’s been around for a long time, and has a large following.

  • Pidgin is an open source client that runs on several
    platforms.

Both are compatible with the major instant messaging clients like AIM, MSN Instant Messenger,
Yahoo, ICQ and others.

For now.

And therein lies the controversy.

Instant messaging protocols are typically closed. The protocols used by MSN
Instant Messenger, or AOL Instant Messenger are not public protocols. Tools like Fire, Trillian, and Pidgin have all had to reverse engineer the protocols to work. And if the protocol changes, the tools
break until the tools are updated to be compatible.

And, technically, using a non-supported client such as Trillian or
Pidgin is probably illegal. From AOL’s point of view, for example, users of those
programs are depriving them of the ability to display the advertising that
supports the free service.

I wish that the services could agree on a common protocol or
a way of interoperating or at least supporting a common client. But they
do not.

Do this

Subscribe to Confident Computing! Less frustration and more confidence, solutions, answers, and tips in your inbox every week.

I'll see you there!

2 comments on “Can I use more than one instant messaging service using only one client?”

  1. The dominant open-source response to IM seems to be Jabber. It is an open XML-based protocol implemented by several clients, including Gaim. Jabber servers can be configured to act as gateways to AIM, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, etc… and can combine all of those protocols for a Jabber client.

    Reply

  2. Can I use more than one instant messaging service using only one client?”:
    actually i had polygamy 7.5 it was functioning well till i update my msn to live messenger and then did not work although i had download the 8.0 version of it but did not work can u tell me the right one and how to use it
    thanks

    Reply

Leave a reply:

Before commenting please:

  • Read the article.
  • Comment on the article.
  • No personal information.
  • No spam.

Comments violating those rules will be removed. Comments that don't add value will be removed, including off-topic or content-free comments, or comments that look even a little bit like spam. All comments containing links and certain keywords will be moderated before publication.

I want comments to be valuable for everyone, including those who come later and take the time to read.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Additional information is available at https://askleo.com/creative-commons-license/.