Integrating instant messaging. I'm Fred Fishkin with Bloomberg Bootcamp. Millions of instant messages fly through cyberspace each day. AOL, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo... everybody has their own instant messaging program. They're all free to use... .but until now... AOL has shut the door on interoperability. That could be changing. The pressure is on with AOL's merger with Time Warner. In the meantime, a new service called Aimster... .is out ... claiming to bridge the instant messaging gap. Spokesman Johnny Deep ... says it lets users chat... and share files... .

"We kind of make them interoperable. So that whether you're using your instant messaging from AOL or MSN or in the future Yahoo, or whether you're using a file sharing service like Aimster or Napster or any of the others that are on the Web, they all are transparently interoperable, work together."

Deep says so far... AOL has not objected to the service...

"We don't actually log into the America Online servers, which in the past is all that they've objected to. Instead we're an Internet router, kind of a routing mechanism, that takes messages from one service and routes them to another. And that they wouldn't block, I believe couldn't block and I don't even think would want to block."

Time will tell. For now... at least... it appears there is finally a bridge across the instant messaging divide. Now we'll never get any work done. Bootcamp, I'm Fred Fishkin, Bloomberg Radio.