Those with Yahoo accounts can utilize both their email and their instant messaging within one browser, and users will no longer have to download Yahoo instant messaging software separately.

Among other features, users will be able to have multiple conversations with a separate conversation window that will display itself within the email window, all without having to close the email window or open up other windows.

In a phone interview with Reuters, John Kremer, VP of Yahoo Mail, said that this new feature provides “an even more social experience.”

“We are hopefully bridging the gap between e-mail users and IM users.” “There is still a chunk of Yahoo Mail users who aren’t using IM,” Kremer added.

An upgrade to all Yahoo email users will be provided within months.

“Instant messaging services are becoming a communications method of choice,” said head of Microsoft’s Communications Division, Philipa Snare. “There is a change taking place around the technology similar to that mobile phones underwent in recent years.”

Microsoft’s Windows Live messenger has more than 240 million active registered users, while Yahoo Messenger has about 110 million accounts, thus attracting strong advertising interest, as ad revenue provides the main source of income for both IM systems. Yahoo also charges users to make voice calls to conventional landlines. Both Microsoft and Yahoo are looking to extend their joint IM services to mobile phones, and Yahoo said that it would not rule out forging further similar partnerships, as it has recently announced a commercial partnership with eBay.

“The new plug-ins for Yahoo Messenger with Voice empower people to create the communications experience they want, by giving them a way to customize their IM service with their favorite web features and services,” said Brad Garlinghouse, Senior VP of Communications, Community and Front Doors at Yahoo. “We are inviting developers to use Yahoo Messenger with Voice’s plug-in technology in new and creative ways and believe that our tens of millions of users worldwide will benefit from industry-wide innovation as a result.”

The Yahoo service also features other enhancements like the ability to pipe music or sound effects into IM telephony on the Internet. The size limit on file transfers has been increased to a gigabyte to handle larger documents and photos sent via IM.

Yahoo officials have stated that the launch coinciding with Microsoft’s service is purely happenstance, despite the competition between the two companies along with Google for user loyalty–which translates into revenue via advertising dollars. For its new messenger, Yahoo has collaborated closely with Amazon and eBay in creating their various plug-ins.

Messenger joins Microsoft’s suite of Windows Live services, which includes e-mail, search, mapping and social networking, which as a whole aim to unite the company’s various Web programs under a unified brand so the software leader can better compete against Yahoo and Google in the growing online advertising market.

Windows Live Messenger builds on top of Microsoft’s MSN Messenger — used by 240 million people worldwide — and offers free PC-to-PC calls, inexpensive calls to ordinary phones from the PC and video conferencing using Web cameras.

The messaging system has been in beta since December 2005, according to Reuters. Most of Microsoft’s Windows Live services are still in the public testing stage, but the company said it plans to roll out more than 20 new Windows Live services over the next year.

“Windows Live is a huge growth opportunity for Microsoft. The online advertising opportunity will be a big growth driver for Microsoft in the coming years as the market continues to expand,” said Martin Taylor, Microsoft corporate vice president for Windows Live and MSN marketing, in a statement.

Other features of Windows Live Messenger include a file-sharing folder to more easily distribute photos or files to people on the user’s contact list, as well as Windows Live Contacts, a feature that allows users to share and subscribe to their friends’ contact list so details are always up to date.

Microsoft also plans to integrate the new messenger with its other Windows Live services.

AIM Pro will be available in two versions: one for small businesses and individuals, and an enterprise edition with more administrative controls for large businesses. AIM Pro will also work with the current consumer-level AIM, possibly opening the door for B2C IM communications. There are currently 70 million users connected to the AIM network through AIM, ICQ, and Apple’s iChat services. AIM Pro will also connect users to the MediaTone Network, WebEx’s collaborative business network.

“Co-created with the recognized business collaboration leader, the new service will bring business-class IM, online conferencing, collaboration, desktop sharing and advanced multimedia services to the global workplace,” said Brian Curry, vice president of premium and subscription services for AOL in a statement. AIM is the current consumer-level IM leader. And the new business-oriented AIM Pro will take it in direct competition with business IM offerings from Microsoft and IBM.

CPL (cost-per-lead), CPS (cost-per-sale) and CPA (cost-per-acquisition) all basically mean the same thing: the publisher does not get paid until a lead, sale or an acquisition occurs. It just depends on which format you choose to use these days. It used to be that there was only one format, the form, which allowed you to give your life information away in one swift click of a submit button. But now there are several different ways to capture the user. It went from the trusted form capture fields to pay-per-call and the latest instant messaging call center; mind you, none of the “old ways” have gone away. Depending on what you the advertiser wants to accomplish, a combination of these will works wonders.

Form Capture: Ask a few simple questions such as name, phone, email, or extensive questions such as income, age, gender to submit to a call center to change the lead into a customer. People are very used to this and welcome the easy way to receive information. This style has had success in all channels, education, mortgage, credit, personal products and the list goes on, because the form can be changed, shortened or lengthened to fit the need of the advertiser and appeals to all age ranges. The advertiser pays for every completed form that is submitted to their call center, and the creative is versatile enough to be used within banners, pointroll, and email.

Pay Per Call: While this is still new, it is showing signs of success, especially among small businesses and education publishers if you can get the 800 number situation worked out. People do a search say for “green cat collars” and an ad shows up saying, “We’ve got your lime green kitty collars right here! Call now” and it displays an 800 number; the user calls the number and instantly connects to the “green collar” store and places an order. The business owner then pays for every call they receive. This is a scenario I have only seen on search engines and it has plenty of room to evolve.

Live Help: Live help, which has been around for a bit and can be found on a variety of sites for various publishers, is just starting to make its way onto education, mortgage and sites like AT&T for assistance. Lead generation is starting to make its way through this format but most people still feel it is for help finding things on the site or for technical help. But it’ll make its way soon enough. Live help is usually found in a form of a button on a website.

“Real-time technology has helped flatten the world by eliminating time and space barriers between people. This has profoundly changed how we all do business,” said IBM’s Michael Rhodin, general manager of Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software in a recent statement.

Interoperability will be based on what is called the Simple Initiation Protocol (SIP), a unified instant messaging standard, and require only one log-in name. In addition to IM cross-communication, IBM plans to add more than 100 other features, including a redesigned web conferencing interface, social networking capabilities, and integrated audio and video through partnerships with business communication leaders Avaya, Nortel, Polycom, Premiere Global Services, Siemens, and Tandberg.

The new additions will enable an effective “click-to-call” system that can connect customers through voice to an IM contact via a single click. IBM said that Sametime 7.5 should be available by the middle of 2006.

Alleging that the portal models of Yahoo and MSN are becoming increasingly obsolete, Murdoch revealed his plan to have MySpace challenge those venerable sites for market share by offering a revamped instant-messaging program, free video downloads and Internet calling.

“The portal model is in danger of becoming out of date,” Murdoch said in a statement. “Young people know exactly what sites they want to go to, and they go there. They don’t have to work their way through Yahoo’s or MSN’s home pages.”

Murdoch also plans to expand MySpace into Western Europe and then further east in the near future, with the aim of filling its mass quantity of ad inventory. Murdoch added that News Corp. has met with ad networks overseas to “judge whether they can sell it better than we can.”

According to comScore, since its January 2004 launch, MySpace has signed up 47 million members and this past December alone, it saw 32 million unique visitors (compared to 127 million for Yahoo). But Murdoch’s $629 million purchase of MySpace and its parent company Intermix hasn’t been all smooth sailing. Just weeks ago, angry MySpace members accused News Corp of censoring their postings and blocking their access to rival sites, specifically when subscribers wrote to each other about rival video-swapping site YouTube. The words were automatically deleted, and attempts to download video images from YouTube led to blank screens. According to SlashDot, News Corp’s intervention with the alteration of personal users provoked hundred of MySpace customers to boycott the site and to relocate to rival sites such as one-time social networking leader Friendster.