Earthling

How did it come to this?

It's pretty ridiculous. As far as text messaging goes, I have one friend who uses MSN messenger. One friend. And for that I have to have the MSN instant messaging program open all day (Sorry, Michelle, it's totally worth it). I have a sprinkling of friends who use Yahoo. I have a bunch who use AIM. I have some who use Vling. And still more who use Jabber.

So what that means is, I can't choose which instant text messaging tool I want to use. Apple's Ichat only talks to Jabber and AIM. AIM only talks to AIM. Vling only talks to Vling (and now Googletalk!). Why should that be, when to me, a text conversation is a text conversation. There are programs that will allow you to sign in to multiple networks, but they are pretty clumsy and I don't see why I should have to use them.

It's not like I get any special thrill out of using AOL's network. What really matters to me is what the desktop program behaves like, not what network it is. Shouldn't it all be like e-mail, where I get to pick which e-mail program I want to use, but still get to send e-mail to anyone who uses e-mail?

EarthLink thinks so. And to that end we support open standards and interoperability. We've been beating the drum for years that we should all find a way to let our messaging networks communicate. According to Tom Hsieh, Director of Voice Products and Engineering, the popular response from the other players has amounted to "Go pound sand."

But Google has come forward and said they'd like to create a federation with us, and in so doing iron out a process for bringing new companies in to the group. Everyone has concerns about the potential for spam and abuse, and by working together and seeing how it goes we can make sure that future partners share the same protection we have. We spent a few months building a gateway that lets our network communicate with theirs, and this week it's ready to launch. We can do the same thing for whoever else wants to join.

It's no secret that for us, once the networks are interoperable, one of the neat features we can offer is a unified identity. Today, if you sign up for a free EarthLink e-mail account, your e-mail address can also work for instant messaging and free VOIP phone communications. So if you want to give out your phone number, you just pass along your e-mail address. What enables this is an open standard called SIP, and any company can use it for their VOIP communications. It's much easier than having to remember three different account names.

At one time in the past, there were 3 or more separate e-mail systems that couldn't send e-mail between them. Eventually, those walls fell and today anyone with an SMTP address can send e-mail to anyone else. We're hoping that today's announcement is the beginning of the end of separate, walled-in instant messaging systems. And the same goes for computer-based VOIP systems.

Go here to sign up for Vling and give it a try. When the new system is completely live and tested from our end, I'll update this blog entry.