How To Create Instant Messaging Hyperlinks
Being self-employed, I rely on the internet to bring clients to me. When they do find me, I want to make it as easy as possible for them to contact me. One way to do that is to insert hyperlinks to my chat ID’s.
A hyperlink is just a link that a person can click on that will instantly open the correct chat window with the person’s chat ID already in place.
The benefits - less clicking for the other person, less emails asking for my chat ID. They can just click on the relevant chat link and begin typing an instant message to me.
If you’d like a live demonstration, you can go to the contact page of one of my websites and click on a link in the chat box.
Here are the chat hyperlinks that I know of. Just enter your username where it says USERNAME and then copy and paste the whole bold line into your website / forum / chat signature, whatever. Then when someone clicks on it, they can instantly send you a message. You can also change the “send me a message” line to something else if you’d prefer.
I was unable to find a hyperlink for ICQ so if anyone can provide one, I would be grateful.
Windows Live Messenger : <a href=”msnim:chat?contact=USERNAME”>Send me a message</a> (the username in this case being the Hotmail address)
Yahoo Messenger : <a href=”ymsgr:sendim?USERNAME”>Send me a message</a>
AIM : <a href=”aim:goim?screenname=USERNAME”>Send me a message</a>
Google Talk : <a href=”gtalk:chat?jid=USERNAME”>Send me a message</a> (the username in this case being the Gmail address)
Skype : <a href=”skype:USERNAME?chat”>Send me a message</a>
Does anyone know any other chat program hyperlinks? Let us know in the comments.
(By) Mark O’Neill is a blogger, writer and English tutor. Check out his blog at BetterThanTherapy.net
Umm… is there some special trick to this, because I tried clicking your links on your contact page, but Firefox gives me this message:
…and Internet Explorer doesn’t do anything. I use Pidgin, so are these links only associated with specific IM programs (like GTalk or Y!M)?
No it works for everything. Judging by your error message, it looks like you need to set the Windows protocols for handling chat programs. Basically you’re giving a command to Windows to open a chat program but it doesn’t know how to do it. So you need to set the registry to open a chat program when you give it a specific command.
I am not 100% sure how to do it. I thought I knew but I think I got it wrong. Probably best if you Googled the error message.
Even better, I think sites like Meebo.com offer the ability to integrate an IM client onto your web site, so clients can just instant message you from there.
Hi,
i have found this page by trying to find and answer for Michael post and Eureka i have found this http://support.mozilla.com/kb/The+protocol+is+not+associated+with+any+program on mozilla website.
I think it can help
As for ICQ, I don’t know about any protocol handler, but they did it long time before anyone else using custom file executed on the client side. I have no clue if it is still usable in the latest versions, but I guess it is.
http://www.icq.com/people/cmd.php?uin=USERNAME&action=message
More information here: http://www.icq.com/panels/
How do I get this to work on myspace?
WHY DONT THESE WORK ON MYSPACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Because MySpace is retarded. They take whatever URL you put in and change it around to their new version of it, often censoring it. For example, any tinyurl.com URLs simply disappear.
it doest work with my wordpress blog too… how did you do it? my blog keep adding http:// after HREF…. please help helpp
I got the answer… the visual plugin tinymce makes the change.. so after I compose the article in visual style, then I go to HTML to edit it manually and go publish without changing back to visual style…
why is nobody answer my question before ?
There’s a typo in the examples: instead of double commas (”) there should be single (’), or else you’ll get an error with browser trying open the url.
I know this is late, but I wanted to provide you an answer to your ICQ question: icq:message?uin=123456789
I suspect some of the same AIM commands work, like addbuddy, but I didn’t check!