Slashdot Mirror
The Business of Instant Messaging
willll writes "The Washington Post is running a story about how AOL plans to make money from Instant Messaging, one of the few successes in recent times for AOL. This article includes plans for corporate versions of AIM as well as discussion on some of the state on instant messaging."
First post and all, but....
I have successfully implemented IM at a number of large organisations here in Australia.
Microsoft decided ages ago to start charging for the service with the release of Titanium (Exchange 2003), so it's hardly news that IM can be profitable.
Good to hear other vendors are getting involved, but until AOL pull their act together in terms of marketing and security, no corporate IT department in it's right mind would deploy their stuff.
that the most trivial application of the internet is the most profitable?
I mean sending text from peer to peer is pretty much the "hello world" of TCP/IP 101.
Sure the clients are a little more advanced, but the base concept is the same.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Seeing as the advertising revenue has gone down the can in recent months, how can they expect to make money?
Are people willing to pay for instant messaging?
Josh
hookers and grits.
Perhaps they could charge by the lol or 'omg u 2' used on their services? Make money and maybe even improve the interweb a little at the same time.
"Its core subscriber base is shrinking, its users are being swamped with junk e-mail,...."
I know one of the reasons family members of mine left was because of the spam. Its insane the crap that gets through to an AOL account. With young members of the family using the accounts it was intollerable. Instead of trying to make money in ways, how about fixing some of the issues with the service and maybe the userbase won't fall. Before long you may start getting new users again. *sigh*
More suggestive is the "serious" use of IM happening on trading desks. Logged, secure, time critical IM. These are the folks who do not screw around. At least not at work. (;
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
..While it has no plans to charge consumers for the existing service, AOL is considering selling add-ons such as matchmaking and games.
It seems like we could be seeing another piece of IM software drifting down the ICQ "bloatware" path. IMHO, as far as IM is concerned, especially when the aim is to expand into the corporate arena, the less features the better.
Ladies, form queue here -->
Amongst other things, AIM still needs some sort of Quality of Service guarentees thrown into the protocol...thus saving conversations like,
...watch...it'll happen!
Tech Peon: Sorry boss, I didn't get the IM informing me I've been laid off due to the tech downturn.
CEODude: But I sent it via AIM to you.
Tech Peon: Ah...putting all our faith into AIM streamlining operations, are we?
Set up like AOL IM, it would be SO SO SO useful in a business environment. It would cut down on so much pointless email and voicemail.
These concerns are largely unfounded. Any organization that uses a groupware (e.g. Exchange/Outlook) package already has virtually instant messaging through their standard email conduit. Similar predictions were offered when high-speed access to the web came to employee's desktops. As with the web, novelty wears off quickly and everyone still needs to get their job done. In my experience, using IM in the office reduces the impulse for someone to walk to my cube and interrupt me face to face for something "quick" that becomes protracted and a more significant time sync as we converse. I see IM as a filter for "time-suckers".
I used it in school - a lot. It is great for sending little snippets of code to friends as a sanity check. It's also a great way to stay in touch with friends and family on the other side of the country - you can always tell that someone is there and available to talk, and the conversation is instantaneous.
I think this would be a great tool for large (think multi-national) companies - it would allow them to bring all of their resources together and I believe it would allow teamwork on a higher level. Of course, this could probably be accomplished with e-mail as well, but IM - as the article said - has that "presence" and spontanaety that really works for good collaboration.
One last note - I haven't used Netmeeting or similar things yet, but I think it would be a good bet that the way for this type of collaboration software to really get its foot in the door or corporate America is through IM.
Now all that is left is to get a large acceptance of a nice, open protocol for IM - that is at least the one way it should be more like e-mail!
-Montag
I ran a Jabber server at work until corporate provided an IM solution. They chose IBM Lotus Sametime.
Speak truth to power.
Not at all. We use it 'unofficially' in our company and it's invaluable for tracking which customer site your workmates are at, asking them quick questions that aren't worth the bother of a distracting phone call, discussing stuff in the 'background' while on conference calls - this last one had the unfortunate side-effect once of someone on the conference call not realising they weren't on mute, someone (ok it was me) sent them a funny IM to which they started laughing out loud, for all on the call to hear... oops. Wouldn't live without it!
Here's an idea that I'd really love to see implemented. Imagine if somebody were to come up with a grammar that worked on top of an open instant messaging protocol (jabber?) that encapsulated features useful for developers within an IDE?
The usage scenario would go something like this: I'm working Foo.java and have a question about some line of code. I right click on the line of code and a popup menu appears. I select Discuss, and then a side menu appears that lists my coworkers. The IDE uses "cvs annotate" (if I'm using CVS) to see who last modified the line of code I mouse'd over, and highlights their user id in my "Discuss" menu. I click the author (or anyone else for that matter), and my IDE sends an instant message to the other user indicating that I would like to collaborate on Foo.java. The remote user accepts the collaboration invitation and my version of the code appears in their editor window. At that point we can both edit the file at the same time, ask questions about code, or maybe even share a mouse? (Might be nice to be able to point to some code, ask a question, and have the remote user not only read what you are typing, but SEE what you are referring to).
Anyhow, it's a pipe dream, but man that would be cool.
Do it for da shorties
I believe that it is this simplicity that is part of what makes AIM so popular. The average AIM user, which never seemed to be very bright to me, could probably really appreciate the straightforward approach AIM takes to instant messaging. ICQ, which is almost the exact opposite, might repulse those same users, but since AOL owns both, then all is good! They are making use of the best of both worlds, it seems.
However, I currently use Yahoo as my primary messenger, and I have no intention of switching. As far as I'm concerned, Yahoo has found a happy medium, and provides, in my opinion, a much more effecient and useful system than the aforementioned clients.
What AOL should be afraid of is users migrating away from them if they get too pushy on the dollar, though since they claim not to be charging money for existing services, they ought to be secure in this area.
Though I'm not a personal supporter of AOL, I do think that they definitely do have a good opportunity for growth, and believe that any innovations they make might help to benefit everyone.
A couple of thoughts on this...
1. Anybody who enables IM for the masses, is going to regret it
2. Anybody who allows IM traffic into and out of their organisation, is going to regret it
That said though...
3. Anybody who uses IM for internal communication only can benefit from it
4. IM (internal) can encourage and facilitate interaction between staff who normally never talk (believe me, I've seen it here)
5. IM can be implemented in less than ONE day (again, I did it here in a matter of hours, including client rollout).
Bottom line? (because it all comes down to money):
A few hours of a techs time gave us an in-house communication tool that sees more use than our phones (for short questions between techs). With two helpdesk locations, it has seen a dramatic rise in interaction between the two sites, and a noticable boost in morale.
With the morale issue, I attribute it to a reduced feeling of "being alone". The 1st level support team now "speak" to the 2nd level team regularly via IM - a big improvement in my opinion.
(personally, I'd happily sacrifice a full working day if it yielded just a few conversations between techs who never speak. Or if it saw a few helpdesk calls each week solved faster).
As more and more employees are using products like AIM to communicate, there is a definte need for some accountability with this communication, especially with security and logging.
If I call someone else in the company, the PBX system (or whatever else is in use) can be set up to log the call. Email is very easily tracked and logged.
AIM conversations, however, use a third-party for most of the communication. Logging is not great in most clients.
The article mentions an enterprise solution developed by IBM to help with that, and I think that there is a market for AOL to get into. Provide a plug-and-play either hardware or software solution that allows internal AIM traffic to remain encrypted on the internal network (internal Buddy Lists and so on) and completely logged. There would also have to be a way for the system to work with other AIM users not on the internal network.
The nice thing about a solution like that would be that the logging and traffic could be completely internal, and the company could place restrictions on outside traffic (no file transfers from the outside, for example).
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Another technology that you probably fear is P2P sharing. This is another useful tool that I believe will start to make an impact on the business world. Locutus is what I have set up for them, and they are able to share documents/media that have had to have been requested while still making sure priveleges and security are a priority.
Perhaps you didn't like the computer -- imagine the gaming that would go on...
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Been struggling with allowing customers access to me when I'm sitting down in front of my pc, and I've done a bit of a test.
I found that customers who demand my time more is a great thing, makes customer service all the easier, but let's face it, INSTANT MESSAGING is just that. Instant.
When you say hello to someone, you don't expect them to take 10 min to say hello back.
When you leave a voicemail, you expect a reply in one business day unless you mark it urgent. With email you expect a response back what? Half day?
I equate an IM an IMMEDIDATE priority even if I'm busy with something else.
Personally, I have seen customers only let down by me not able to keep up with IM customers fast enough.
Great idea, but in the end, the purchasing agents, CEO's with decision making ability and the standards committee's don't have time for me, let alone IM me.
Any other account managers successfully integrate this into their 100-200 customer/month workday?
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering.
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
I have worked for a few companies where AIM was used by almost everyone in the company. Its alot easier to IM you're coworker who is 300 yards away about something. It comes in handy when you dont want to make a phone call or you're on the phone and you can just send an IM to get something accomplished. I remember when my friends saw me sitting on AIM at work they thought i had the best job in the world, I just saw it as part of being at work, plus it was nice to be able to chat with the outside world when you were stressed out and needed a break.
Yeah,it is, but it's true. Our company (a 150-ish person company in a tech industry) uses it pretty extesively internally... turns out half of our supply chain uses it too.
Our IT staff (read: me) threw fits about it when I first started seeing so much traffic to AOL's servers and discovered all kinds of people had been installing it. Turns out the owner and the president both have it on their personal machines and just gave everybody the go-ahead to install it, quite against my recomendations.
As much as I still despise it, I am stunned at how many people actually legitimately use it.
If it weren't being used for legit uses to communicate outside our LAN, then I could get Jabber in the door, but I can't rely on AOL not to screw with the protocols in the future. So it's either risk that, which would naturally be my fault, or endure the ad-supported AIM, security risks and all (exploitation of which would also be my fault). Grr...sorry, I'm beginning to vent...
All I really meant to say is that it really, truly is gaining popularity in legitimate business. AIM isn't just for breakfast anymore...
teeker
Productivity will come to a halt, and innovation will be stagnant for 10-15 years as a result.
Are you for real? That's quite a "doomsayer" prediction.
A corporate IM solution will have the option to limit who you can connect to (ie, no one outside the company). Those whose productivity comes to a halt, will be the same people that spends all day chatting with co-workers over other means: telephone, water cooler, whatever.
No sig
Do you:
a) Provide as good an IM tool as you can, which allows you to talk to anyone else on the internet, or
b) 'Capitalize on your community' by providing an inward looking tool which is only any good when talking to other AOL users?
An easy one to answer that. Now a test. Look through that article, and count the number of times that interoperability with MS/Yahoo is mentioned. Count the number of mentions for open standards for interoperability. Count the number of potential exciting innovations there (IM to mobiles? News headlines over IM? IM as pushed alerts for updated webpages?).
Does anyone want to predict how badly AOL will muck this up?
At my last job they deployed an IM client over the entire company and it proved to be a huge benefit. In fact, the general counsel issued guidelines on when the text of an IM conversation needed to be saved.
The benefits of IM, as I see it are:
- The ability to talk with a colleague on an asynchronous basis
- The ability to see if someone was at their computer
- A reduction in "non-work" related wandering
At first I was skeptical of IM, but after having it for awhile, I much prefer it over the phone. My current employer does not use it and find I am not as productive.Here's what I like about it that's better than the free version:
One minor downside is that the menus in Trillian Pro don't really work with the X-Mouse feature from TweakUI. But I'd rather live without X-Mouse than Trillian Pro, oddly enough.
All in all, $25 well spent. Considering that I actively use all four major IM networks and IRC, Trillian saves me from wasting a lot of RAM, cluttering up my system tray, seeing ads in IM clients, etc. The only single-network IM client I ever use now is Yahoo, and that's only when I want to do voice chat or see someone's webcam. I never use mIRC anymore.
Note that I'm not affiliated with Cerulean in any way, I'm just a satisfied customer.
If only AOL expanded their instant messenger service. Sure you can type and they can type back, but what if you could actually hear the person you were chatting with? Maybe this could even be done in "Real Time." We could come up with a device so you could walk around the room and talk at the same time without tricky networking setup. We could take everyone's name and give it a number and put them in a big book so that if you wanted to chat with someone and didn't know their number you could look it up. It would even have their address!
Think of the possibilities!
Did I miss something in the article or what? I didn't see ANY mention of how AOL plans on turning a profit. Not much more than the very old news that there "should" be a way to turn that many eyeballs into dollars. I wouldn't bet on it.
As to all the folks whining on about how awful IM is in the workplace, I couldn't disagree more. A couple years back our sales force started using IM to message eachother, as it was the only way to communicate while on the phone. This spread to other areas of the company, and has grown in importance to how we do business.
For example, say a salesman has a customer on the phone and needs detailed inventory data that only the purchasing folks have. Rather than putting that customer on hold, an IM over to the right person and the call never has to go on hold to get an answer.
Like any other Internet technology, there's a fair amount of non-business related communication going on. This doesn't even begin to outweigh the benefits IM has had at my company. YMMV.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Considering that you have email, which you can connect to a pager in case they aren't there, the telephone (ah, old faithful) with voicemail which also can be paging you in case you miss an important call, your cell phone which many of us have permanently attached to our ears, and the list goes on and on and on....
Personally were I running a business this is about the last thing in the world I would bother spending any money on. That's just me though. Maybe there is some great benefit to this that I don't see. Someone make me a case for why I would need to spend some money on something like this. I'm curious here. Doubtlessly there's got to be something I'm missing.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Been struggling with allowing customers access to me when I'm sitting down in front of my pc, and I've done a bit of a test.
Probably a bad idea out of the gate. IM's primary business use is allowing for more efficient internal communications. I'd never give a customer my IM name as a contact, as I couldn't possibly guarantee I'd be right in front of my computer to respond.
This is where E-Mail is a far better solution. Best tool for the job and all.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
from the article:
...while it has no plans to charge consumers for the existing service...
phew, alright then. i stopped reading there as that is all i was concerned with. glad they put it close to the beginning, heh. i thought for sure they were about to make ICQ or one of their competetors the NEW number 1 instant messaging program. glad to hear i won't be having to inform my friends of a new screenname on another service.
as soon as AOL starts charging for instant messenger, I (and probably the rest of the world) will move on.
Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
-Dr. Weird
What about that advertisement banner at the top of the buddy list? "2.3 billion instant messages are sent around the world via America Online" every day. That means there are a lot of people looking at that buddy list, and in turn that add at the top of it.
Seems like they are making a good bit selling that add space. Like most other free things making money through advertisement sells like television, radio, and web sites.
I'm sure there are plenty of companies out there that are willing to pay to have that kind of exposure. Especially if they can reach "40 percent of all Americans from age of 14 to 24."
Mr. Shein wants to legalize spam and allow ISP to charge for it, a position that I completely oppose. Shein's proposal will result in more spam and flood our in-boxes with even more junk. Meanwhile, users are grabing any technology that is less spam friendly (and not acrane and difficult to use).
One of the beauties of Jabber, and also one that hasn't received as much attention as it should IMHO, is that is can connect to pretty much every other network out there. Granted this is a server feature, just having a Jabber client doesn't mean you get this connectivity.
.edu. Even though we have software policies (both ethical and those mandated physically on the network) we still find students installing every known IM client to man. To solve this we installed a Jabber server with transports that would allow it to connect to MSN/Yahoo/ICQ/AIM/IRC/etc.. and installed a Jabber client on each machine. Then we created policy stating that you can connect to any network you need to, but you must use the Jabber client to do so. Once students get over the hump of figuring out YAIMC, they actually enjoy being able to login once and be connected to any network with which they have an account. It also concretely gives them no excuse to install any other IM client on our machines.
FEX:
I admin at an
At home I've taken to doing the same thing. I run a local Jabber server with a full transport setup and just connect to myself with my client. It's a bit backwards, but pays off in desk space and effeciency in the end.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
You are assuming that it is a bunch of teeny-bopper 14-year-olds using the program. Well, believe me, it isn't.
I have had many deep, meaningful conversations with my intelligent friends on it, and they did not contain merely "lol"s and "sups". AIM is widely used by those of college-age, I assure you, and is as popular as cell-phone communication by many (more popular by me as I can't afford a fancy cell phone plan)
And AIM is a good way to talk to people that are long distance FREE, like my parents from college. What other non-IM technology such as this is available that is CHEAPER than FREE? And also teachable to a mother who does not understand computers all that well?
AIM is very convenient to use b/c many of my friends use DSL/Cable/dorm ethernet connections and we can stay on forever and are very reachable through these connections. If we're home, we're probably on AIM. Very convenient for homework questions, conversations about your day, listening to a friend who's mother just died, I mean WHATever you need to talk about. It is not what you people seem to think it is. It has totally taken off with my generation (I'm 18) and is a large part of our culture.
In conclusion, IMs are very productive, cheap, efficient, and easy-to-use forms of communication. If you have a lot of friends and family using it, it is way better than the telephone, and is certainly not non-sensical if used in the ways that my friends and I use it.
The Present is the point at which time touches eternity. - C.S. Lewis
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
is if Instant Messaging has become so popular, how come corporations haven't accepted standardization of it's platform (I.E. Jabber)? Everyone's got incompatabilities with AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN, etc. etc. So you've always either got a half-ass client that tries to do them all, or you have a bunch of different ones open all at once to keep all of your contacts happy. Why isn't the Jabber server being used like a corporate E-Mail server, instead of a central server governed by one, multinational company? In my mind, that's just bogus. Would you use fileserver.aol.com to store all of your sensitive marketing/accounting information? I don't think so. So why use a central server for all of your correspondance about the same subjects? Why waste internet bandwidth transferring files to someone 10 feet away from you in the office when you can send it to them through a private IM server? Hell, you can even require SSL connections!! What else could you ask for?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
There's a lot of money to be made in the IM to SMS arena. Companies like Verizon Wireless make tons of money off SMS. At 10 cents per text message, and 2 cents per incoming message, money can go down the drain very quickly. Also, since the average IM message is much shorter than the average SMS message, the amount of money that come in increases. If AOL can promote the use of its servers as means of passing SMS's through between carriers (as inter-carrier SMS is still not ready for prime time in my area), and use it as a means of communication to the home, they can rake in the money. But first they need to negotiate for a cut of the money first. I doubt they are getting a cut of the money from the wireless providers now, simply because the providers are treating AIM messages the same as SMS. But when the AOL domination of the SMS to computer IM market takes hold, I wouldn't be surprised to see them lobby for a cut of the proceeds.
The auto-away works really well.
If I'm not typing for more than 30 seconds, it shows AWAY, which is right.
And I've been reading good articles in business magazines which shows how IM is actually better than email, in that you can SEE when someone is there, then send them an email.
Knowing when a customer is there is certainly quite helpful, and in return, they know when you're there.
I still like the idea personally.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can't see corporations seeing a benefit from anything beyond the current form of AIM (or MSN, or whatever).
Those that would embrace it see nothing wrong with using the central servers. That is what enables it to work. If the servers go down, *everyone* knows and understands. Reliability is important, but accountability is more important. If it is obvious to people that it isn't the company's fault, it isn't so bad for the company as it would be if they perceived that the company is too incompetent to maintain their mail server, or else not realize the server is down and assume an important communication goes through that didn't. If companies *really* wanted IM on that level, Jabber would see more widespread deployment.
On the other hand, a great number of companies don't take IM seriously. The market perception, especially by those in suits, is that IM is seen as a toy technology, for personal use only. At the previous two companies I worked at, any kind of IM client was banned by company policy, it was seen as too much of a distraction. Didn't stop people. The network administrator was forced to 'block' traffic. He then proceeded to block it only to the point where the suits could test and think it was effectively blocked, yet provided people circumvention tips when asked. This is a boneheaded strategy, it is another viable communication form. Even now, when dealing with companies with a problematic mail server who need to communicate with me and I ask if they have an IM service and they seem to find it funny to even think of using IM in such a way. The attitude reflects 'this is a place of business, why would we be on an IM service while working, that is preposterous!'. Phones are for 'instant communication', email is for electronic correspondence, and many suits see that as that, with no middleground to fill.
Personally, I think IM services are a great thing for business and personal use. It is a great way to communicate without being obtrusive into work. While doing IM, I can do other things while waiting for responses. If on the phone, it is really hard to do anything else but focus on the phone. I've always been fond of Jabber, and wish that it would catch on. I know better though. Suits that have stereotyped IM as a toy are going to be a really hard sell on this I think.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Just a question, but with AOL, Yahoo and MSN all making plays for the Corperate IM market, where is Jabber?
I know it could really help out in the organisation that I work at as we have offices right across the country and its bloody expensive to get all the execs together for a meeting. If Jabber had Video/Audio support it would be just what the doctor ordered.
If I wasn't already building something else, I might even take it on myself.
What I'm interested in seeing in the IM software is how they are going to set up the hierarchy. Will the sensitive business information exchanged between two engineers designing the next best product be traveling around the internet? Or will AOL release a client/server model that will allow a company to contain their information and optional contain messages from/to the outside world?
My two cents is that most businesses are more ready to take a Microsoft answer in the all-in-one suite or find a open solution if their staff has the time. Besides, AOL IMer is nowhere near business app status.
And to those that don't think IMs have a place in business or that people just trade smiley faces all day, you haven't seen how many meetings are avoided by simple online real-time at-your-own-computer-and-chair chat.
It's a historical accident that, instead, we have this kludgy, centralized, closed infrastructure that's owned by AOL and a few other players. If AOL goes away and takes their "free service" with them, all the better, as far as I'm concerned. But we'll probably have to listen to this kind of whining over and over again.
Here's the "Jabber Enhancement Proposal":t ml
http://www.jabber.org/jeps/jep-0058.h
There're tons of other interesting JEPs as well:
http://www.jabber.org/jeps/jeplist.php
Check 'em out!
FIrst, realize that stuff happens in the corporate world BEYOND what is posted to /.
& ca t=instant_messaging
Then after realizing how much bigger the world is than all of us, go here and do some reading.
http://news.yahoo.com/fc?tmpl=fc&cid=34&in=tech
Long story short, AOL, MS, and Yahoo! are all tripping over themselves to offer a corporate IM solution after they dropped the ball squabbling about standards and opening up each other's IM networks to each other. Right now, there are something like 30+ IM startups all trying to be number one in the corporate IM game. Currently, IBM/Lotus (didn't see that coming did you?) SameTime has like 65% market share in corporate IM.
MS does have some rudimentary IM stuff in older Exchange variants but its anemic for corp needs. They have a project called Greenwich which will be their corporate solution. It's mostly a collaborative effort with another IM startup.
Also, late last year AOL was awarded a patent for IM technology. Seems the original patent was filed for in '97 by Mirabilis, which AOL bought in '98. So, hence they have THE patent on IM now. What that holds remains to be seen...
I work in a company with 4 locations, two on the West Coast, one in the Rockies, and one on the East Coast. I send/receive on the order of 300 IM's per day, discussing any topic from customer issues to what I had for dinner last night. I have resolved at least 4 customer issues today alone utilizing *only* IM; another employee has the customer on the phone and I am able to work with the employee to determine the issue and resolve it remotely *without having to get directly involved via phone*. That's it, the customer's issue is resolved and they are happy; both I and my co-worker can get back to work (immediately) knowing that our customer is satisified.
And it didn't take an email, a trouble ticket, or 4-24 hours to get completed (these are regular process for dealing with issues that technicians can't personally resolve immediately).
While not *all* of my IM's are work-related in the strictest sense, about 85% of my traffic is directly related to my work directives. And the rest saves me from having to walk over/drive over/call over to speak with people who I would normally shoot the proverbial "bull" with anyway.
Unproductive? I think you're eating too many paint chips.
I have only one thing to say:
$ write user
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
Getting a little defensive, are we?
That said, I use IM to fight with my dad, and I'm just under the 30 mark. :)
Like what I said? You might like my music
Point in case; there are plenty of bots available for jabber servers. Join any of the public groupchats conference.jabber.org hosts and there are often bots hanging around with that "common knowledge." Additionally, there are plenty of examples of bots already around built upon the numerous APIs to jabber, including a number written in perl against NET::Jabber.
I personally use one that checks my presence and sends me messages if mail shows up in my inbox and I'm in one of the availability modes I've defined as meaning I'd like to hear biff bark.
Hey, don't be too hard on the guy, at least he's honest. He knows he's a freak, and so filed himself in my freaks list as he appropriately...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News