After AOL, Yahoo! is also experimenting with XMPP

Posted by Mickaël Rémond on February 09, 2008

Interest among big instant messaging players is suddently rising. Yahoo! is now experimenting with the open XMPP protocol.

After AOL experiments to give access to AIM and ICQ with the XMPP protocol, This time, it has been found that Yahoo! is also experimenting with XMPP to provide chat for its new video sharing service called live.

Proof is given with the following sequence:

Memphis-2:~ mremond$ telnet chat.live.yahoo.com 5222
Trying 68.180.220.125...
Connected to chat.live.yahoo10.akadns.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<stream:stream xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams' version='1.0'
 xmlns='jabber:client' to='chat.live.yahoo.com' >

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><stream:stream
 xmlns:stream="http://etherx.jabber.org/streams" xmlns="jabber:client"
 from="chat.live.yahoo.com"
 id="5d46000b" xml:lang="en" version="1.0"><stream:features>
<mechanisms xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-sasl"><mechanism>PLAIN</mechanism>
<mechanism>JIVE-SHAREDSECRET</mechanism></mechanisms><compression
 xmlns="http://jabber.org/features/compress"><method>zlib</method></compression>
<auth xmlns="http://jabber.org/features/iq-auth"/></stream:features>

This is a bit technical, but what what this command shows, is that Yahoo! server is replying on the standard XMPP port. When sending the stream opening XML, it replies with a server stream, meaning that there is this is really an XMPP server.

Note that we have no reason to believe yet that those experimentations will ever come to Yahoo! Instant Messaging service. However, as they gather XMPP knowledge, they are more and more likely to progressively add XMPP support to their main instant messaging service.

Update 1: I have checked and server-to-server connections are not open: It means you cannot join a Yahoo! Live chat room with your usual XMPP account and client.