[edit] Brief Description

[edit] Wiki description

Description

Instant messaging is an internet service which helps you send messages to others in real time or receive them in real time, to or from others and both parts should use the same instant messaging software. As it sounds as e-mail messaging, here you can see who is available at this moment, as you can see who is logged into the server or whose offline. At e-mail service you can’t be sure if you get a quick answer, it may take days. With instant messaging you’re not forced to answer in no time, is not a big obligation, as telephone/cell could be. You will know immediately who is available as you can, with most of the software, change your status in “available”, “busy” or “away”.

History

In the 1970s this madness started. It began operating on UNIX systems, and first you could talk to others from the same machine, then from the local network and then from all across the net.

First it appear from Commondore 64, the Quantum Link service which brought the instant messaging service to everybody, where you could see the name of who’s receiving and who’s typing the message, and not only, you could play games (primitive ones, of course), you could get news (al sorts: latest worlds news, sports, weather) an they called it “on-line messages” aka OLM. They used GUI but a much more primitive one from the ones used in our times.

In 1996 appeared the first true instant messenger, with GUI-based messaging clients, of course, with a covering all over the Internet, ICQ and after that in 1997 AOL came with AIM aka Aol instant messaging. Later on, AOL bought ICQ, and others instant messaging application appeared. Therefore we had: Excite, MSN, Ubique and Yahoo!, and in 1998 IBM released IBM Lotus Sametime. After few years, in 2000 the open source application began to rise and Jabber, Pidgin, Trillian, Miranda got launched.

Later on, the white board was invented.

Statistics

Here are the charts for the active users from the first party software on instant messaging. The numbers are in “million users”.

Here you have for total users (million users), on the most populated servers:

And here are the third-party software with thier total users, also in millions, but they are not so populated, although the quantity is not negligible.

Important characteristics

Text, Instant messages

This is the fact on what is based: text messages sent instantly to your buddies from your list, received immediately (some of them may have a delay with maximum 1 second) and the capacity to know which buddy is available, instead of waiting for an e-mail response, or disturbing them directly from their activities by ringing them on their cells. On mostly all software, you can change the type of your text ( like times new roman, arial and so on), the color, size, you can choose it bold, italic or underlined.

Interactive communication

Most of them, but not all software, have special expressions whenever you feel like laughing, crying, smiling and so on called emoticons. Also other advanced applications enable you to share special IMvironments with your friends, animated, standard, added by them, or you can add a picture of your own as a background.

At Yahoo free chat messenger you will find special interactive messages, with animated characters, from special countries, or with special messages.

At MSN messenger you have other special interactive and animated notices, called winks. Special characters or just objects, will pop-up on the window of instant messaging, to draw your attention.

Also, to most of advanced software you can draw your friends attention with special nudges, different at every application, with different annoying noises.

Conferencing rooms

You can talk with one buddy in one window but you can make a big conference with more then one friend, make instant invitations and have your little online conference where you can talk with your group.

Chat rooms

Some of the instant messengers have special chat rooms, which you can join for free, usually classified by topics. (by countries, interests and so on) Here you will find other new people, not the ones you already have in your buddy list.

Audio communication

The full-features software, or the ones more advanced have this element. So you can speak, literally call others computer, connect your microphone and headsets and ready to go. Some of them charge you for this service, some of them don’t. The most popular one is Skype; also Yahoo Messenger has the same option. On some applications you can have this option on the conferencing rooms also.

Video sharing

Trend in 2003, viewing your friends through their webcam became very used and searched on our days. You can get it free, on Skype which comes with a clear view, but Yahoo is a competitor also, although the commercial in the bottom of the window may disturb you. On some applications you can have this option on the conferencing rooms also.

Send files

Through this kind of software you can make exchange with your friends of files, of maximum sizes (which differ from software to software), and all for free.

Calling computer-telephone

That means you can call from your computer someone’s cell/telephone from all over the world. Some of the instant messaging software have this feature, and they all came with their offer or low prices, packages and other proposals, developing a big market, with big competitors. Here comes again Skype with their special offers, which you shouldn’t ignore.

SMS

Yes, short message service included on your instant messaging software. If you are offline, some of the applications have the option to send to you a SMS on your cell phone with your offline messages. This feature is still developing, and needs improvements because they mostly work in US but other countries are not that privileged.

Classification

As small and medium business are developing fast, they’ve become convinced of the value of instant messaging, but they are searching for a safer way to communicate. Here you will find the IM (we’ve presented till far) and EIM.

EIM

EIM comes from enterprise instant messaging. These are not public software and they have restricted and security precautions to protect the enterprises. Here are some examples: sun ONE IM, IBM Lotus IM & web conferencing, Microsoft office live communications server 2003.

IM

These are the public instant messaging software. You download them free from the internet, sign up and you can start chatting. Here are same examples: Yahoo Instant messaging, AOL instant messaging.

Jabber has known its popularity from the multi way you can use it. It’s free to download but you can use it public or as an enterprise, as it can be isolated from the public Jabber network.