IM Interoperability Matrix
March 8, 2009 by Jeff Hester
Filed under Instant Messaging
Interoperability is the holy grail of instant messaging, allowing your instant messenger to communicate with other instant messenger platforms. How does your instant messenger stack up when it comes to interoperability?
The following chart shows which protocols are supported by some of the most popular instant messaging programs. Note that in most cases, support for an additional protocol still requires that you have a valid user account on each network.
| Supported Protocols |
WLM (MSN) |
Y!M | AIM | ICQ | XMPP GTalk, Jabber |
IRC | Bonjour | MySpace | |||
| Adium | 17 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial | Yes | Yes | |
 |
AIM | 2 | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
| Beejive | 7 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | |
 |
Digsby | 7 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| eBuddy | 7 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | |
| iChat | 4 | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | |
| ICQ | 2 | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | |
| Instan-t | 6 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | |
| Kopete | 11 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | |
| meebo | 5 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | |
| Miranda IM | 15 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| Nimbuzz | 12 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | |
| Paltalk | 3 | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | |
| Pidgin | 12 | Partial | Partial | Yes | Partial | Partial | Yes | Partial | Yes | Yes | |
| Trillian Basic | 5 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | |
 |
Trillian Pro | 6 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial | Yes | Partial | No | No |
| Trillian Astra | 9 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial | Yes | Partial | Yes | No | |
 |
Windows Live Messenger (WLM) | 3 | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
 |
Yahoo! Messenger | 3 | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
Updated on March 11, 2009.
Note that we haven’t included all the protocols available. Instead, we chose to focus on the most popular. For a more detailed look at IM interoperability, see the Multiprotocol Clients chart on Wikipedia. Got an update? Leave a comment below.
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