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Will Instant Messaging Ever Unite?
scallion writes "An article in Technology Review titled Getting AOL To Talk To MSN points out that currently the world of instant messaging is "as factionalized as Afghanistan," then asks, what will it take to unite all these individual IM networks under one umbrella?"
The problem is that AOL made instant messaging as we know it today. They feel they are the "inventors" and hence shouldn't have to let anyone else in on their network. If they had opened things up from the get go, they would now be the absolute standard for instant messaging instead of the de facto one for 90%+ of the people I know. Their stubbornness is what caused it.
So instead, people use multiple programs to talk on multiple networks? Wouldn't that mean that Trillian is still better because you only need to download and install one program? You don't get one window, but you can at least eliminate some unused programs...
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Oh bother.
"Imagine," says Sonu Aggarwal, CEO of Cordant, a Bellvue, WA maker of IM gateway software, "having a contact in your IM buddy list that represents your Delta flight reservation. Rather than having to call an 800-number and digging up your reservation code, that 'buddy' is your ticket, constantly communicating the status of the reservation."
For IM to become a real killer app in the way described above (i.e. for the medium to be taken seriously for commercial use), some consolidation and an official standard would be needed.
---- scrm
Trillian is only a temporary answer. Jabber could've been a better piece of the answer, but it got de-railed as far as IM interoperability. We truly need interoperable protocols. Or better yet, a standard protocol.
The road block to such a protocol, however, is AIM, and possibly the other IM providers. How do you get people to switch from one established, large IM provider such as AOL to a new protocol/provider? If you don't have interoperability (which AOL has demonstrate its resistance to in the past), you won't get people to switch.
Jabber alone is NOT the answer. You need interoperability with existing protocols. What could does it do me to sit on Jabber and talk to myself when I can't communicate with my buddies on AIM (since aim-t was still broken last I checked due to IP blocks by AOL)? And they won't switch for the same reason. It's a Catch-22.
It seems to me that the ideal solution would be for everyone to agree on a single protocol. This will not happen. You see, it used to be that someone would come out with a protocol and client and server implementations, and would release them into the wild. Then, people would either use it (like IRC) or not (like UNIX's talk command). If they did, then other and better implementations would come out, as long as the protocol was solid. This is how email, FTP, HTTP and many other common Internet protocols were developed.
Now, though, companies create the protocols and allow them only to the chosen few who use their software (think AOL for IM and Real for streaming content). The protocol is not generally available, meaning better clients can't be made, and there is often a dependence upon resources wholly owned by a single company. Sometimes (again AOL and Real come to mind) these are genuinely useful. In that case, someone (another company, generally) will produce a competing product, that does the same thing in a different way.
Some people will choose one method and some will choose another. Users cannot force standardization. The corporate developers are being paid to enforce balkanization, rather than to work towards standardization. Independent developers cannot get enough of a critical mass to make it feasible for users to migrate to their systems, or for corporations to adopt the independent methods as a matter of convenience.
The net result, no pun intended, is that there is no way to move to a standard. This leaves us with the options of using a client which speaks all of the different protocols, choosing to pocket ourselves into a small part of the possible Internet community (with corresponding obeisance to the local corporate power), or choosing to cover our screen with all of the various blessed programs. Only a unified client holds any real appeal to me, and that is fraught with problems. For example, try talking to AIM when AOL keeps changing the way the servers work on the back end! It's a nontrivial problem.
So I guess the point I'm trying to make is that expecting a unified IM system to appear, just because it makes sense from a user perspective, is not very likely to be worth anyone's while.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
I look to Jabber as the foundation of sensible IM-ing; users are screenname@jabber.server.address, and messaging users on multiple "services" is just a matter of adding them to your buddy list. No funky add-ons or protocol descriptors needed. Only problem is, Jabber isn't useful as a revenue generator. But what if IM-ing simply became a standard ISP feature? If each ISP ran a Jabber-type server, you'd just need someone's email address to reach him.
Since IM-ing is obviously becoming as widely used as email, why isn't it a part of the standard service package? If distributed, like Jabber, I can't see it placing a huge burden on even very small ISPs.
Email is pretty much standardized on one app, and look how great that's been!
Seriously, we recognize the dangers of monoculture in other areas of computing -- OS, email client, etc. -- what makes people think that IM is going to be any better? I'd think the last thing we'd want in computing is another monoculture.
I know the question is not when will IM be ruled by a single client but rather when will IM clients be interoperable, but is there really any chance of it happening another way? These are big corporations! These are the same people who keep us perpetually 3-5 years behind the rest of the world on cellphone technology!
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
> At work we use IM as our primary means of communication
We have a much better technique, although it seems a little outmoded these days. What we do is "talk to each other". Give it a try sometime
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
Standardising on a standard would be a Good thing, and I don't think it would result in less choice. What it would mean is that you could choose your service provider and client by the quality of their services and features, rather than by the amount of your friends that are on that service - just like email. It's a royal pain in the ass having to have three different clients on my machine at once, or go to a multi-system program that invariably breaks whenever the protocol on one of them is changed....
Imagine a world where you could only talk on email to other people on that email system!
why don't we just let them decide everything for us. then everyone will be happy happy happy.
seriously, unless the big 3 or 4 or whatever have incentive do unite their IM's, there will be none
but, if you unite, there is a security issue. of all people, the readers of /. should know this. it's one reason why M$ gets targeted by virii... they're the baby seals with big eyes just looking for a beating. this is what would happen with such a unified system. but, if it were open-source... (*gasp* says the big companies! heresy!)
besides security, the issue of servers comes into play. who will host this crap for cheap? will people pay 2 bucks a month for IM? i doubt it, knowing those who only have something like 5 - 10 people on their list. will there be advertisements like there is now? will there be run-arounds like ther is now? it'd be nice if everyone just got along, but what's the chances of that happening, huh?
Why do we need a standard IM protocol? The same reason we needed a standard email protocol. Interoperable email was solved by having each of the big boys (like Prodigy, Compuserve, and AOL) to agree on a standard. The answer was _not_ to use some all-in-one Prodigy+Compuserver+AOL mail application.
:)
There are other problems with the Trillian approach. First, it is a "single-vendor-solution", which is not what you want with something as important as IM. Imagine if the only email client you could ever use was Outlook. What do you do about Linux? What about PDAs? Wait for Cerulean to develop clients for every situation? Not. The whole point of an open protocol is to allow anyone to develop a interoperable server or client.
Second, AOL (and Yahoo also, based on rumors) are not happy with these 3rd-party interoperability attempts. What happens when AOL decides to detect Trillian, and not allow it to use their network? Please, we don't need this kind of childish BS in instant messaging, especially as it becomes more prevalent in the corporate world.
My personal jabber server keeps on ticking no matter what AOL does. This is how IM should have been since the beginning.
IM interoperability is a serious problem. I'll agree with you that Trillian solves the problem, however in my opinion it is in a temporary way. The real solution is to standardize on a protocol. Here's to hoping Jabber takes over the world
HanzoSan, your comments make no sense. The previous post is bang-on correct. It is the interoperability of the protocols, not the burocracy that is the problem. Yes, we should have competing phone companies, but that has nothing to do with the fact that I should be able to call you from any phone, regardless of your provider. Imagine how annoying it would be if you could only call other cell phones from a cell phone and could never call a regular land-line phone. At some point, the two systems are bridged. IM systems currently are not bridged (officially), so you must keep a collection of alternate IM clients, nicks and passwords in order to communicate with all of your friends.
I agree that innovation is very important and branding allows the companies to stay afloat. However, graphical smilies and popup ads are not of much use to me. I think that a very simple basic interoperability is of more use, both to users and (in the long run) IM companies.There would still be lots of room to innovate in protocol extensions, client quality and server services.