(found via Dare’s blog) What do you think the most widely used Instant Messaging platform is? I would have guessed AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) since I remember it having been around back when IM was a new thing. I’d be wrong though, very wrong according to the recent stats. Even before Yahoo and MSN announced interoperability between their messengers, each of them was bigger than AOL – by a lot.

In May ’06, MSN was the leader with 204 million users. Yahoo had 77 million. AIM was down around 33 million… roughly tied with ICQ. MSN has also been growing since last year, while the other two had been shrinking.