The blogs have been abuzz about the latest not-yet-announced interoperability agreement between Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger.
But, interestingly enough, this announcement comes at a point in time when I've been seriously considering shitcanning Yahoo Messenger entirely. Granted, I've talked about this before but something always drew me back... former Yahoo co-workers I wanted to chat with that didn't have AIM, you name it.
But, over the last 60 days, something has changed. I have been getting a metric fuckload of instant-messenger spam, all of it from Yahoo. I'm signed in with Adium (not the three year old, neglected, steaming pile of rancid filth that Yahoo passes off as a Mac client), and while I have yet to get a single AIM spam, I must deal -- at least ten to fifteen times a day -- with Yahoo Messenger spam, including but not limited to:
- Twelve lines of what is either gibberish or something not at all resembling a western language, with a link buried in the middle of it all.
- Some person in some backwater third-world country who "wants to be friends".
- Occasionally, some backwater third-world resident who is convinced I already am their friend.
- This posse of Nike/Adidas sneaker salesman who appear to be skimming sneakers off the top of their production run in their sweatshop and are trying to hawk them to me... consistently, every couple days.
Why is it Yahoo Messenger has these problems and AOL Instant Messenger doesn't? What is AOL doing right that Yahoo absolutely cannot seem to manage to make happen?
What I do know is that this time, it's going to take more than "wanting to talk to some person" to bring me back to the Yahoo Messenger fold, and this Yahoo/MSN thing isn't it... from my perspective this can only make it worse, as there are now even more people who could start spamming me.
I've long maintained, even when I worked at Yahoo, that Yahoo did not even pretend to have a handle on their spam issues. Clearly, not much has changed in four years.
If you want to reach me via instant message, and you're on that Yahoo Messenger service, you can try dballing13 on AIM, or dballing@gmail.com on Google's Jabber server.
I've found that IM spam came in waves. I had a spurt a few months ago, but then it fell off and now I barely get any.
The few weeks I had AIM, I got tons of spam messages, pretty much the same sort of thing you're seeing.
I think that like email, Spam is kind of the luck of the draw and how far down you happen to be on a given spammer's attack list.
Almost completely off-topic (but MS-deal-making related): Any thoughts on the MS and Real settlement?
I rarely get any spam on Y!IM.
*sigh* even the spammers don't like me...