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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.
IM is exciting because you can tell who to contact, and whether they are hearing.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
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
Try using IM in a support environment, where staff don't always have the option of speaking to each other (especially while in a call, or when they are geographically dispersed).
In those situations, IM is really helpful - while taking a call, a tech can run a thought past another staff member, can see if anybody else can reproduce a simple fault, all without interrupting the user.
For those of us in tech support who remember that the user experience is important, little improvements like this can make the difference.
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".
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
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!
I'm not talking about Trillian Pro here.
I'm talking about a professionally written program that supports both UNIX and Win32 (using QT, perhaps), doesn't crash every few hours (WTF is up with all the crappy IM clients that crash more than Win 3.1?), implements REAL features, has technical support (for those luser friends of mine who can't figure out how to install AIM, even when I talk them through it), and doesn't use ads or spyware.
Here are the features I want:
I've come to the conclusion that I must write this software myself. Nobody else is going to implement a portable, spyware and ad free IM client that doesn't constantly crash.
If someone beats me to it, I guess I'll pony up my cash. But I'm sort of hoping to get a free ride on my own protocol specification.
And please don't suggest Trillian Pro. Thank you.
You seem to have missed the point. The technologies you mentioned are great when you don't know whether or not the person is there. However, it's difficult to have a conversation over e-mail or voice mail, and that's where IM shines. IM is not about leaving a message for somebody, but engaging them in conversation when you can't speak to them in person. Yes, you could use the telephone, but you don't know for sure if they're there or not, and that also involves interrupting whatever you happen to be doing at the moment. IM let's you know when somebody is available, and you can ping back and forth without having to walk across the building or stop your work to pick up the phone.
A good example of IM technology being used in a "business" would be my college job as a computer lab sitter. During each shift, there were sitters at all of the different labs on campus, and we were all in contact through an internal IRC server. It made it very easy to keep in touch with other sitters, and even managers. We could ask questions of the other sitters when we didn't know the answer, and doing it over IRC was a lot less disruptive than telling the user, "Hold on while I call over to another lab." One advantage this system has over IM is that for a small group, we were all in the same channel (chat room, conference, party line, whatever you want to call it), so if one sitter was away from his desk, any of the others could still see the question and help out.
Cryptography support.
Servers currently support SSL, and future versions will allow end-to-end encryption of the conversation itself.
Stability.
There are many different jabber clients. Some are more stable than others. Right now, I use Psi, which hasn't crashed on me once.
It should look nice and have a cool GUI.
Again, lots of different clients. I think Psi's GUI is nice. It certainly isn't as crufty as ICQ. But YMMV on this one.
It should be IM client, and nothing else.
Again, lots of clients to choose from. I don't know what kinds of features they may offer, but I'm sure there's bound to be one suited to you.
Portability.
Psi is written against QT and runs on Windows and linux. Not sure about other platforms, but I know there are Java clients out there that should run on nearly anything.
Zero tolerance policy on SPAM.
This would be up to the individual jabber server. The only thing I really got spam with is ICQ, though, which is why I don't use it. I don't get AIM spam since I stopped accepting messages from people not on my buddy list.
Support for modules.
This I'm not completely sure about. I know the SSL stuff for Psi is a drop in module. You just put the DLL (or .so if using linux) in the program's directory, and when you start back up, you have SSL available.
An open protocol specification.
The jabber protocol is completely open and 100% free. Anyone who wants is able to not only write their own client, but also their own server. Anyone can download the reference server code and run their own, too. It's very nice.
A real revenue model, not based on ads or spyware.
How about just free?
A shiny retail box.
Can't help ya there.
Jabber apparently stacks up pretty well. :)
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer