Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Instant messaging
Instant messaging (IM) is, as the name implies, communication that goes
directly from the sender to one or more recipient computers. IM messages are
not stored on a server, but may be logged on the sending or receiving system;
so the recipient has to be currently online to receive a message (with some
exceptions). This provides some advantage in that the sender can usually tell if
the addressee is online and able to read the message right away. However, some
IM systems do allow offline messages to recipients not currently logged in, so
there is some blurring of the distinction between IM and email.
Instant messaging can certainly be used to conduct one-on-one interviews
and the experience would be similar to an interview conducted on the tele-
phone, although intonations would be lost. The advantage is that the interview
would be immediately transcribed on to the messaging window, noting who
the speaker is and also, optionally, the time. For most IM clients, the text of the
message needs to be copied and pasted from the window into a document to
save it; but many have preferences or settings that allow for the logging or
archiving of any exchanges made while the client is connected.
Instant messaging originated on the early multi-user timesharing computer
systems of the 1960s, and allowed conversational communication between
users logged on the computer. When computer networking became common
in the 1980s, these facilities were extended to allow messaging between differ-
ent computers. Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) became popular during this time
as a platform where users could log in specifically for online communication
with other users. Many BBSs started with telephone modem connections, but
eventually became Internet connected sites.
America Online (AOL) was one of the early large online portals that pro-
vided various forms of information but, importantly for the present chapter,
included a graphical user interface (GUI) to an instant messaging system it
called AIM . Another popular early GUI-based IM system was ICQ , which was
eventually purchased by AOL and folded into AIM. Soon, Microsoft got into
the game with MSN Messenger (now known as Windows Live ), and also
Yahoo! with Yahoo! Messenger . Unfortunately though, unlike modern email,
most IM systems are not compatible with other IM systems; each uses its own
protocol. AIM uses protocols called OSCAR or TOC, MSN uses MSNP,
Yahoo! uses YMSG, and there is a newer protocol called XMPP, which is an
open protocol that, it is hoped, will be used by several clients. Mostly these
do not inter-operate, so that in general there can be no messages between
different systems and users wishing to use multiple systems must use multiple
messaging clients. However, there are some clients that can understand more
than one protocol. A fairly complete matrix of compatibilities can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messaging_clients. We'll
summarize a few of them.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search