Instant Messaging: The World of Tomorrow, Today.
Definition: Instant messaging (or IM) is a form of real-time communication between two or more people based on typed text through a computer network such as the Internet.
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IM was first introduced by an Israeli company called Mirabilis in November 1996, though its roots stem from the early forms of messaging systems on private computers networks in the early 1970’s. The Plato System was an early form of these programs. Known as the “talk†program, it was available in the 1970’s. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, the Unix / Linux “talk†programmes were mainly used by academics and engineers. Each character appeared as it was typed. It was also the first IM to include a list of contacts. When “Mirabilis†first introduced its free IM (known as ICQ) in 1996, its biggest rival AOL had 6 million users, soon though the numbers of ICQ users became a threat to AOL and AOL bought out Mirabilis. A few years later AOL / ICQ was awarded 2 patents. Nowadays IM allows easy, instant communication. The user knows whether or not a contact is online, which is a huge contrast to other forms of communication such as email. Also IM is less intrusive than the use of phones as the user can set his or her status to “onlineâ€, “away†or “busyâ€. Also the user doesn’t have to reply straight away, they can use it at their own discretion, which is a huge advantage when compared to other forms of communication. Also IM allows for the user to partake in file sharing with their contacts. This allows them to send URL’s, IMG’s, video and music clips for free and in a matter of seconds. Conversations which are held between the users are also logged which allows clarity helps to stop misunderstanding between the different parties in a conversation, which tends to be a constant obstacle in communication and which is not possible when using SMS or phone. IM has proved to be useful to everyone from corporate workers to teenagers in modern day communication, the latter of which of course makes up the majority of users. And as the younger generation step into the workforce it has been predicted that IM will grow in acceptance and could possibly end up being used as widely by businesses as it is now by the younger generation.
To see what people really thought about Instant Messaging we handed out a survey to 30 random students, who were of a wide variety coming from completely different backgrounds and having different views and opinions on IM as well as having vastly different uses for IM. When we analysed the answers to the survey we came up with the following results:
100% of those who took the survey use the internet.
Those who took the survey spent the following amount of time weekly on the internet:
14% - use the internet less than 5 hours a week.
40% - use it for more than 5 hours a week bout not more than 10 hours.
30% - use it for more than 10 hours a week, but not more than 15 hours a week
16% - use the internet for more than 15 hours weekly.
Of the 30 people that took the survey, 67% use IM while 33% don’t use it at all.
From that 67%:
10% - use it everyday.
35% - use it very rarely.
10% - use it once a week
25% - use it more than once a week but not often.
20% - use it very often.
20% - use AOL as their provider.
55% - use MSN.
15% - use yahoo!
20% - use skype.
We also conducted this survey to see what people thought of IM and how it has impacted on us communication-wise as well as how it has benefited modern day communication. We wanted to see also if people knew a lot about IM or about the history of it. We found that not many people knew much about IM however, which led us to believe that IM has really been embraced by our generation as we don’t question it we just use it. People didn’t have much to say about the benefits either that we hadn’t already thought of. They said that it was cheaper and more effective than SMS that it was quicker than other forms of communication also as it is in real time. People obviously prefer it to other forms of communication as nobody had any complaints to make about it at all, which we found surprising to say the least. Everyone seemed to think that IM has changed communication also as it has made it easier to make contact with others as well as being completely free to use. Some thought that it had changed the way in which we talk also as the use of abbreviations and slang has become wide-spread throughout IM. We asked the students whether or not they talk to complete strangers on IM to which most of them replied no, though there was a few who quite comfortably said yes, leading us to the conclusion that IM has begun to open up new worlds to people regarding making new friends and the acquisition of new contacts. We were also interested in whether or not people like to use mobile IM or even if they knew what it mobile IM is. 70% of those who took the survey didn’t even know what it is, 87% don’t use the main reason being that it costs too much and that it is not practical, only 4 people actually use it and of those 4 only 2 use it frequently.
It seems as though the only thing left is to talk about the future possibilities if IM. On the 13th of January 2006, the GSM (global system for mobile communications) association announced an initiative to make IM as popular and ubiquitous among mobile users as SMS. They want to build on the success of text messaging, by adding presence information, the ability to track a whole conversation and instant delivery. Yahoo! and Microsoft have also recently announced that they are merging to become the second largest IM provider to compete with AOL (AIM).
Apart from the survey which we both devised and interpreted, we used the following resources to gather extra information on the subject of Instant Messaging.
These resource are:
https://lists.aas.duke.edu/pipermail/ntgroup/2003-October/001697.html
http://www.gsmworld.com/news/press_2006/press06_12.shtml