Comments on: Instant Messaging Is Dead – Or Is It?

By: Shannon Peil

Shannon Peil — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 22:37:15 +0000

I still use AIM, and I’m invisible on facebook for one primary reason – fb chat has been ridiculously broken, clunky, and inconvenient since it was added. Beyond just functionality problems, it also allows anyone in your friends list to IM you, and I don’t believe I’m the only person who doesn’t consider every facebook friend to be “IM worthy.” People in my AIM buddy list are people I actually want to talk to, regardless of whether they have an fb account or not.

I think what we need is a service that allows texting from phone number to phone number with pc and mac clients instead of just phones. Typing is more convenient for when you are at the office, or at home – and then you can still text regularly while you are out.

By: Wes

Wes — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 05:41:51 +0000

I really wish the people on my AIM would start talking again. It’s sad to say, but yes, IMing is dying, and quite terribly. I think only two people talk to me on AIM anymore, and only one is online regularly. Even then, that person is usually not paying attention to it. As for MSN, 90% of my contacts are regularly inactive.

Maybe someone should petition for an IM revival.

By: LuisR

LuisR — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:32:48 +0000

It’s a shame that the good old IM is going that way. I still prefer Live Messenger or ICQ over the Facebook chat. You have file sharing, audio and video calls with the dedicated messenger programs, something I use quite often. And most importantly, you have more control on who can see you online and who can’t.

By: Jase

Jase — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 03:05:04 +0000

MSN/Win Live (whatever you wanna call it) I use daily for work purposes (remote desktop stuff mostly)
and to chat to a few friends occssionally.

as for Yahoo – I haven’t touched that for about a decade, since the earliest version that supported webcams (v6.0?)

AOL/AIM – err pass…. I set up an account for AIM but I never used it.

ICQ – I havent touched it since mid 2003 – only really used it to send free SMS messages while the main GSM based telco here actually supported it., i got peed off that spambots/botnets kept trying to add me as well, and also the fact that my ISP doesn’t support the protocol it runs on anymore put the final nail in its coffin!

IRC – I still use it occasionally, very very rarely though.

is it dead? not quite, but almost, its dying a slow, drawn out, and painful death.

By: Force

Force — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 01:40:11 +0000

I’ve used a multi-protocol of some shape or form for years. I’d have to say, 4 years ago is about when traditional IM chat started being overtaken by social networks.

Today, most of the online chats I have either happen in an IRC chatroom or through the facebook protocol (I currently use the digsby chat client, which has supported facebook chat for a while now). There are still a few folks I chat regularly using the traditional chat protocols (AIM, Y!, MSN), but the list has certainly gotten quite short.

By: William Pearson

William Pearson — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:41:36 +0000

I still use IM all the time, it’s still the fastest way to collaborate and share things with someone online in real time.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:17:43 +0000

Still use Skype’s, but only until we get video up and running with my wife’s family in Malaysia.

By: David M

David M — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 14:19:35 +0000

Wow…instant messaging. I haven’t done that since I had an AOL account back in the 90′s. I had about 50 people on my Buddy List. We had some great times sending messages back and forth while in various chat rooms. There is nothing like that now. I miss the sense of community in a way.

AOL got really tight with their rules in the chat rooms. Eventually you could no longer “scroll”, post a URL or even make up words or symbols that represent a swear word. There were lurkers in the chatrooms who would look for rule violations and report you. I eventually got enough strikes against me that AOL canceled my membership. AOL held a kangaroo court on a conference call with about 4 people with thick Indian accents. I pleaded my case but lost anyway. I never went back to AOL.

Being kicked off AOL was a good thing because it encouraged me to venture to other places on the internet…even as primitive as the internet was back in the nineties.

By: Aaron Fournier

Aaron Fournier — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:27:31 +0000

Traditional IM with AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, and Windows Live will probably never be as popular as it once was because more people are text messaging instead. Facebook IM will probably help save instant messaging to a certain degree because so many people use Facebook.