Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Marissa Meyer hinted on Tuesday of the company's next plans about the booming mobile industry in relation to the Internet, which the company used to dominate several years ago.

The strong market demand for smartphones and contents of Android or iOS platform will be a great opportunity for Yahoo to capitalise in mobile technology. She said Yahoo has assets on the web which have something to do with things that people want on their cell phones.

"The interesting thing is when you look at what people want to do on their phone, it's mail, weather, check stock quotes and news. That's Yahoo's business. This is a huge opportunity for us because we have the content and all the Ms information people want on their phones," TheDroidGuy quoted Ms Mayer, who became Yahoo's sixth CEO in July 2011, hired to turn around the company.

Although no longer number one, Yahoo is still known for its web portal, search engine, and other various services, and continues to have roughly 700 million visits on its Web site every month.

It also has the Yahoo Messenger, one of its famous and still widely used services that allow instant messaging, video call, and voice call. It also offers email notifications from Yahoo Mail, file transfers, webcam hosting, SMS service, and chat rooms with variety of categories.

Its chat service has become more interesting with the availability of avatars and plugins which include backgrounds with themes and games that allow the chatters in private messaging to play interactively as well.

Besides YM, several chat clients have boomed in the Internet with services that offer voice calls, webcam chat, and SMS sending as well. However, the issue frequently complained by chat clients is the problem with connection stability and speed which is why Yahoo Messenger continues to be popular because it is available in Windows, iOS, Android and Symbian platforms.

Below are four other popular chat services with millions of users worldwide.

Skype

It was released in 2003 and transformed into a platform with over 600 million users, and finally bought by Microsoft in 2011.

Skype allows users to communicate using peer by voice via microphone, video by webcam and instant messaging. Calls can be done via Skype to Skype or by using traditional telephone networks, which may incur charges. Skype has the following features:

  • Outgoing calls to landline and mobile phones with charges
  • Caller ID for outgoing calls
  • SkypeIn which allow users to receive calls in Skype (any devices installed) from mobile phones or landline
  • Allows callers to leave voicemail messages for Skype users, it is currently a free service.
  • Video calling
  • SMS service
  • Toolbars available for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox

Skype is available in desktop and smartphone version running on Windows, iOS, BlackBerry, Symbian, Android and Linux platforms.

AOL Instant Messenger

It was released by AOL in May 1997, and at one time, had the largest share of instant messaging market in North America and United States with 52 per cent share in 2006. AIM is available in Windows, Windows Mobile, Mac OS X, Android, iOS and BlackBerry. It features include:

  • Age restrictions to children below 13 years old, preventing them to use AIM
  • Chat robots which receive and send messages as base response and also helps in various ways such as studying.
  • AIM Wxpress for users unable or unwilling to install the standalone application. AIM Express runs as a pop-up browser window.
  • AIM Real-Time which gives a peek of what the other user is typing in real-time. The service also lets visually impaired users to convert messages from text to speech.

Windows Live Messenger

It is a designed instant messaging client from Microsoft which works with Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, BlackBerry, iOS, S60, Symbian OS and Zune HD. The client is a part of the Windows Live feature and set as an online service. Aside the basic function and services of instant messaging, the latest version has the following services:

  • Album Viewer that allows photo viewing in SkyDrive albums and Facebook galleries.
  • Appear offline to a specific contact or to an entire category within Windows Live Messenger
  • Social network integration to Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn via Windows Live Profile
  • Offline messaging
  • Games and applications
  • Interoperability to Yahoo Messenger
  • Xbox integration

IRC Clients

IRC is probably the oldest and first used chatting over the Internet service. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) allows chat using discussion fora or channels and private messaging. This protocol was created in 1998 and until today is still alive and servicing many users worldwide. The software is simple, small in memory, and has several channels accessible around the world.

IRC works by prompting username and password which can be changed anytime without the need for registration, unlike with other chat clients, clicking the channel server request where the user wants to begin chatting, and then visiting the channel which allow the user to see all other users posting messages in the lobby. A user may select several channels at the same time and in any country.

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