As it became known recently among off-the-record versions, the new Windows Live Messenger version will try to integrate itself with other social networks like Facebook or Twitter. What’s truth is that there are already other instant messenger clients like Digsby, Pidgin or ICQ 7 that perform this integration, although in different ways.
ICQ 7, the new version of the messenger that reigned during the end of the 90s and beginning of this century, incorporates apart from an updated and attractive interface, a support from which it’s possible to access to the notifications from Facebook, Delicious, Digg, Flickr, Twitter y YouTube. Apart from being able to carry on conversations through its own protocol, from the ICQ 7 window you can update the status of the social networks, in simultaneous or individually, as also upload photos. However, it doesn’t have any feature for the user to chat with his contacts, friends or followers from its own windows, and in some cases, this can be a little small to view the content of some of the social networks.

Who lets us do this is Digsby, which, as opposed to the previous one, doesn’t have its own protocol. Despite this, this program is a messenger client that has support for many protocols like Msn, Yahoo!, AIM, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, MySpace IM, Jabber and even ICQ.

Moreover, it lets us easily see the updates for the status, notifications and other publications from our contacts on social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter. We can also see from its window the inbox from email services like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, AOL/IM Mail and from POP e IMAP accounts. Digsby becomes a very good option integrating a great amount of options on its window.

An application that started developing long time ago as a multiprotocol is Pidgin. It has support for a great number of instant messenger protocols like MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, AIM and IRC, to name the most popular ones. Apart from that, using an add-on you can also incorporate Facebook and publish on Twitter. Furthermore, it counts with many options to administer our contacts and conversations, with automatic messages, and other unusual options like the “psychic mode”, which is known as one of the bests on that aspect.

Without a doubt, the tendency that comes developing for years of integrating the 2.0 Webs with the instant messengers it’s going to be a highlight in a few months. We can follow this trend by using any of these programs, it can be Digsby, if what interest us the most is to have access to all the services on a single window, Pidgin, if we want to have probably the best messenger client as regards options without losing sight of the integration possibilities with other 2.0 webs, or it can be ICQ 7, if we go for an updated and attractive interface.