In what is arguably the most nerdy way to send and receive instant messaging through popular networks such AIM, Yahoo and MSN, it is possible to do it all using IRC.

While it’s true that instant messaging isn’t used as much as it used to be, IRC shows absolutely no signs of slowing down whatsoever and people do use it regularly – so much that in fact that many have an IRC client (such as mIRC) open all the time.

The "easiest" way I found to use IM in IRC is to use BitlBee. How it works goes like this:

1. Connect to im.bitlbee.org on port 6667 using your preferred IRC client.

This is the same as you would with any other IRC server. The only difference is that you will not be joining a channel. Instead you will be auto-joined to &bitlbee. Two users will be there. You and @root.

Important note: Mind your nick, because when you register yourself, Bitlbee will go by what nick you used at the time you registered.

2. Register yourself

No account setup is required. Simply type:

REGISTER your-password-here

Obviously change your-password-here to a password of your choice.

After setting this, each time you login to im.bitlbee.org you will need to send the IDENTIFY command like this:

IDENTIFY your-password-here

3. Add in some IM accounts

This is where it starts to get tricky, but once you learn how it works it’s relatively simple to understand.

Bitlbee supports six types of accounts: Jabber, MSN, OSCAR (AIM or ICQ), Yahoo and Twitter.

To add in a Yahoo account, you would type this:

ACCOUNT ADD YAHOO your-Yahoo-username your-Yahoo-password

To add in an MSN account, you would type this:

ACCOUNT ADD MSN your-MSN-username your-MSN-password

The only rogue of the bunch are AIM and ICQ accounts. To add in one of those, you don’t add "AIM" or "ICQ" but rather "OSCAR", like this:

ACCOUNT ADD OSCAR your-AIM-username your-AIM-password

Each time you add in a new account, @root will reply back:

<@root> Account successfully added

4. Review the accounts you just added

Once you’ve added in all your accounts, review your account list by typing:

ACCOUNT list

Your account list will look similar to this:

0. yahoo, your-Yahoo-ID
1. msn, your-MSN-username
2. oscar, your-AIM-username

It’s important to know what number is assigned to which account. If you forget at any time, it’s not a problem, just run the ACCOUNT list command again.

5. Getting your accounts logged in and online

Adding accounts does not mean they’re logged in as this must be done manually. Fortunately the command to do so is easy.

If you want all your accounts to go online now, type:

ACCOUNT on

If you only want to login to a specific account, use the account number as mentioned a moment ago:

ACCOUNT on 2

Logging out of accounts is with, you guessed it, OFF.

To logout of all accounts:

ACCOUNT off

Or a specific account:

ACCOUNT off 1

6. Chatting

In order to chat with someone else, they must be added to your contact/buddy list per specific account.

For someone that sends you a message that is not on your list, you will see something like this:

<@root> oscar – Message from unknown handle someone-on-AIM:
<@root> test msg

"someone-on-AIM" is whoever is trying to IM you.

You will need to add that user to your contact/buddy list first before you can chat with them:

ADD 1 someone-on-AIM

The 1 is for the account to add that user to. Remember, you can use ACCOUNT list to see what number is connected to which account as noted above.

Once the user is added to your contact list, simply type the user’s name followed by a colon and your reply message back to them:

someone-on-AIM: hi, what’s up?

Doing other things

There are many other things you can do using IM in this fashion. To see what’s available, type HELP. If you need help with a specific function, such as ACCOUNT, you would type HELP ACCOUNT.

Security concerns?

The largest security concern is that you are putting username and password information on a medium that is by nature completely insecure because it’s all plain text. As long as you’re aware of this, then you can proceed along as usual. However if you’re uncomfortable putting in user credential information into IRC (which is totally understandable), don’t use it or use a throw-away IM account instead.

Concerning things like blocking users, yes you have the ability to block using the IRC way. It’s easy enough to do, just use BLOCK username-here.

Advantages of using IM via IRC

Plain raw text

This is how chatting was meant to be. No custom colors, no emoticons, no webcam, no file transfers. Just test. For those of you who say, "How boring..", texting on a cell phone is just raw text.

Uses lowest possible bandwidth

Even with the slowest internet connection, using IM in this way is very speedy.

Easier to hide from prying eyes

If you have people that look over your shoulder constantly to see what you’re doing on your computer, an IM client sticks out like a sore thumb. IRC text on the other hand doesn’t. In order for someone to actually read your screen, they’d literally have to be right over your shoulder to make it out.

Easily customized

With IRC clients like mIRC you can configure them to do just about anything because you can program custom scripts for it. This is the ultimate as far as customization is concerned.

Using IRC via IM may be the most nerdy way to IM, but for some it might have been just what you were looking for.

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