Instant messaging

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Image:Powwow-chat-program-screens.png Instant messaging is the act of instantly communicating between two or more people over a network such as the Internet.

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Overview

Instant messaging requires the use of a client program that hooks up an instant messaging service and differs from e-mail in that conversations are then able to happen in realtime. Most services offer a presence information feature, indicating whether people on one's list of contacts are currently online and available to chat. This may be called a 'Buddy List'. In early instant messaging programs, each letter appeared as it was typed, and when letters were deleted to correct typos this was also seen in real time. This made it more like a telephone conversation than exchanging letters. In modern instant messaging programs, the other party in the conversation generally only sees each line of text right after a new line is started. Most instant messaging applications also include the ability to set a status message, roughly analogous to the message on a telephone answering machine.

Popular instant messaging services on the public Internet include Qnext, MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Skype, Google Talk, .NET Messenger Service, Jabber, QQ, iChat and ICQ. These services owe many ideas to an older (and still popular) online chat medium known as Internet Relay Chat (IRC).

Image:Unix talk example.gif

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Benefits

Instant messaging typically boosts communication and allows easy collaboration. In contrast to e-mails or phone, the parties know whether the peer is available. Most systems allow the user to set an online status or away message so peers get notified whenever the user is available, busy, or away from the computer. On the other hand, people are not forced to reply immediately to incoming messages. This way, communication via instant messaging can be less intrusive than communication via phone, which is partly a reason why instant messaging becomes more and more important in corporate environments. Also, the fact that instant messages typically get logged in a local message history closes the gap to the persistent nature of e-mails, facilitating quick, safe, and persistent exchange of information such as URLs or document snippets, which can be a pain when done using inappropriate media such as phone.

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History

An early and partial form of messaging systems was implemented on private computer networks such as the PLATO system in the early 1970s. Later the UNIX/LINUX "talk" messaging systems were widely used by engineers and academics in the 1980s and 1990s to communicate across the internet. ICQ was the first general instant messenger combining presence or list of contacts with the ability to send messages. ICQ was introduced in November 1996. ICQ was awarded two patents from the U.S. patent office. After its introduction, a number of variations of instant messaging have arisen in parallel in many places, each with its own protocol. This has led to users running many instant messaging applications simultaneously to be available on several networks. Alternatively they could use a client which supports many protocols, such as Gaim, Trillian or Miranda clients.

On single line bulletin board systems (BBS), the system operator (sysop) and the single caller online could typically chat with one another. One's typing appeared in real time for the other person as an instant message equivalent.

Recently, many instant messaging services have begun to offer video conferencing features, Voice Over IP (VoIP) and web conferencing services. Web conferencing services integrate both video conferencing and instant messaging capabilities..

On December 19, 2002, AOL Time Warner announced that ICQ had been issued a United States patent for instant messaging, but they also said that they had no plans on enforcing their patent at the present time.

The term "instant messenger" is a service mark of AOL Time Warner and may not be used in software not affiliated with AOL. For this reason, the instant messaging client formerly known as GAIM or gAIM is now only to be referred to as Gaim or gaim.

What really characterizes instant messaging from other forms of text messaging applications is the use of "presence" which enables the user of an instant messaging applications to rendez-vous with his/her counterparties and see their status of availability.


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Cooperation

There have been several attempts to create a unified standard for instant messaging: IETF's SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions), APEX (Application Exchange), Prim (Presence and Instant Messaging Protocol), the open XML-based XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol), more commonly known as Jabber and OMA's (Open Mobile Alliance) IMPS (Instant Messaging and Presence Service) created specifically for mobile devices.

Most attempts at creating a unified standard for the major IM providers (AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft) have failed and each continues to use its own proprietary protocol.

However, while discussions at IETF were stalled, Reuters head of collaboration services, David Gurle (the founder of Microsoft's Real Time Communication and Collaboration business), surprised everybody by signing the first inter-service provider connectivity agreement on September 2003. This historic agreement enabled AIM, ICQ and MSN Messenger users to talk with Reuters Messaging counterparts and vice-versa against an access fee. Following this breakthrough agreement between networks Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL came to a deal where Microsoft's Live Communication Server 2005 (which is interestingly also used by Reuters for its Reuters Messaging service)users would also have the possibility to talk to public instant messaging users. This deal settled once for all the protocol for interconnectivity in the market as SIP/SIMPLE and established a connectivity fee for accessing public instant messaging clouds. Separately, on October 13, 2005 Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that by summer of 2006 they would interoperate using SIP/SIMPLE which is followed on December 2005 by the AOL and Google strategic parternership deal where Google Talk users would be to talk with AIM and ICQ users provided they have an identity at AOL.

There are two ways to combine the many disparate protocols:

  1. One way is to combine the many disparate protocols inside the IM client application. Examples include iChat, Trillian, Gaim, Fire, Proteus, Miranda IM, Adium, Everybuddy, Ayttm, Kopete, Centericq, BitlBee, Windows Messenger, and IMVITE.
  2. The other way is to combine the many disparate protocols inside the IM server application. This approach moves the task of communicating to the other services to the server. Clients need not know or care about other IM protocols. For example, LCS 2005 Public IM Connectivity. This approach is popular in Jabber/XMPP servers however the so-called transport projects suffer the same reverse engineering difficulties as any other project involved with closed protocols or formats.

The IMPS standard mentioned earlier is part of a mobile telephone industry initiative to bring instant messaging to mobile phones. The Open Mobile Alliance took over the standards, originally called Wireless Village, in November 2002. There is a free IMPS-based service called Yamigo which allows instant messaging on mobile phones even if your carrier doesn't provide its own Wireless Village service. Yamigo acts as a standalone instant messaging network, but can also integrate with ICQ, AIM, MSN and Yahoo. A common misconception is that it also integrates with Jabber, but it does not yet.

Some approaches, such as that adopted by the Sonork enterprise IM software or the Jabber/XMPP network or Winpopup LAN Messenger or Softros LAN Messenger, allow organizations to create their own private instant messaging network by enabling them to limit access to the server (often with the IM network entirely behind their firewall) and administer user permissions. Typically, a dedicated corporate IM server has several advantages such as pre-populated contact lists, integrated authentication, and better security and privacy.

Some networks have made changes to prevent them from being utilized by such multi-network IM clients. For example, Trillian had to release several revisions and patches to allow its users to access the MSN, AOL, and Yahoo networks, after changes were made to these networks. The major IM providers typically cite the need for formal agreements as well as security concerns as reasons for making these changes.

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Decentralized instant messaging

Some newer concepts of instant messaging try to make a decentralized instant messaging system via peer-to-peer technology. In such a system, a distributed hash table lookup is used to determine if buddies are online or not. This approach tries to make instant messaging independent of a central authority.

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Servers

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User base

  • AIM: 53 million active users (Nielsen//NetRatings, August 2005), 195 million total (January 2003).
  • Skype: 45 million total (September 2005).
  • MSN Messenger: 29 million active (Nielsen//NetRatings, August 2005), 155 million total (April 2005).
  • Yahoo Messenger: 21 million active (September 2005).
  • ICQ: 15 million active world wide, 400 million total .
  • Jabber: 13.5 million enterprise users (Osterman Research August 2005), this does not count users via ISPs and other service providers (estimated to be more than 7.5 million, for a total of at least 21 million).
  • QQ: 10 million active, 400 million total users (Tencent Q1 results 2005).
  • Gadu-Gadu: 3.6 million total (January 2005).
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See also

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External links

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