02.15.07
Integrating the desktop with the web
So Yahoo! has gone and integrated IM with mail, and it looks like they did a pretty slick job.
However, from what I can tell in the video, they haven’t found a solution to the big problem: bridging the gap between the desktop and the web. If the user has a desktop client running at the same time, I can’t help but feel like the experience is broken. Some of the user’s conversations will be taking place in the client and some will be taking place through the web. How is the user supposed to manage and/or consolidate these different conversations?
Not only that, but due to the inherit limitations of HTML, the web experience is going to be vastly different from the client experience (unless you want to dumb down your client experience to match, which doesn’t make any sense to me). So not only does the user have conversations in different places, she also has to deal with different behaviors and capabilities depending on where the conversation is taking place.
No matter how smooth the implementation, I don’t really think the integration of Webmail and IM will ever be complete unless this hurdle is overcome.