Social networking site MySpace officially launched a beta version of its MySpaceIM instant messaging client—although the company notes it began rolling out the software a year ago, and it’s been spreading virally ever since, to the point where 17 million MySpace users have already given it a shot.
“This is a product with personality,” said MySpace president and co-founder Tom Anderson, in a statement. “MySpaceIM was born out of user feedback and we’ve spent the last year listening to our community and tweaking it to match their needs. MySpace will continue to build an open, unique feature set that’s as creative and expressive as our users.”
MySpaceIM provides one-click access to a user’s MySpace friends’ profiles, and pops up instant alerts to comments, requests, and messages sent to a user’s MySpace account. Users can create custom sounds (“zaps”) and emoticons for use in their messages, can tap into a friend’s profile song while chatting with them, and lets users share pictures by simply dragging them to friends. Users also get one-click access to their MySpace mail and bulletins, and can set their computer’s background image to their MySpace photos.
The MySpaceIM client may have been sneaking around for a year, but Mac and Linux users are still left out in the cold: MySpaceIM requires Windows 98/2000/XP/ or Vista and Internet Explorer 5.0 or later.
