Free Winks and MSN winks

Microsoft MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger have missed a deadline to achieve interoperability between their rival instant messaging services.

The two firms promised last year to allow users of Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger to contact each other by the second quarter of 2006, but have not yet linked their services.

A Yahoo spokesman told vnunet.com that the company plans to make an announcement "soon", but declined to make any further comment.

Microsoft wrote in a statement to vnunet.com that interoperability would be achieved "very soon".

"Yahoo and MSN are looking forward to bringing interoperability to its combined global instant messaging community very soon. We have not announced a specific date yet and have no other details to share at this time," the company said.

Yahoo and Microsoft both trail behind market lead AOL in the instant messaging market.

None of the leading IM platforms offers interoperability, forcing users to maintain accounts for multiple services if they want to stay in touch with all their contacts.

This has given rise to so-called unified messengers, such as Trillian for the PC and Fire for the Mac, which manage multiple user accounts.