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Instant Messaging Goes Graphical
williampiv writes "For most of the millions of people around the world who regularly use instant messaging, the communications tool has largely been a text-only experience in which typed emoticons offer only minimal clues to someone's state of mind.
The recent launch of two services -- a brand new, fully three-dimensional chat-room product known as IMVU, and AOL Instant Messenger's new 3-D SuperBuddy icons -- is putting the spotlight on a major shift by the leading IM providers toward making graphical avatars a fundamental personalization feature."
Why is this news?
Banaaaana!
A webcam pretty much does the same thing - except you don't have avatars, you ARE the avatar.
I'm probably just too much of an IRC addict to like the idea.
"[..] It feels a little like a solution in search of a problem. [..]"
Come on, text-based chats are more than enough
for easy real-time communication. If you want
something fancy use a Webcam-chat or video-conferencing instead.
Honestly, not only has this been done before with other chat clients (didn't Microsoft have a failed attempt), but what's the point? Who would actually use this? When I use AIM I specifically disable smilies and such because they're annoying... why would I now want disembodied aliens on my intarweb screen? AIM having those "themed" IM windows in 5.0 was a terrible idea. They just keep adding more crap into their client, kind of how they ruined ICQ.
If you say "here goes my karma" I will bite you!!!
When my mom and dad were kids, they worked on the farm. (29 hours a day, etc, etc) But they played with nearby kids.
When I was a kid, I mostly played with nearby kids, but my parents drove me to a few friends' houses. (and vice versa)
My kids played with a few neighborhood kids, but mostly we drove them to friends' houses. (and vice versa)
Do you see a trend here?
In the old days, we adapted and adjusted to the people around us. We are progressing toward simply finding people like us, so we don't have to adapt and adjust. The widespread availability of the car was probably a driving factor in this. But even as we are more choosey about our friends, we have to retain the same set of acquaintances, because there are after all the limitations of the physical world.
Now add the Internet. It makes it more possible than ever to withdraw from the real world. To some extent, it even allows you to minimize interactions with real-world acquaintences. Now we can pick our friends AND, to a good extent, our actuaintances. Or at least, the Internet allows us to manipulate our focus more easily, ignoring or bashing those who do not fit our world-view.
I would submit that our interpersonal skills are atrophying as a result, and that one place it becomes evident is the current election cycle. When you pick your friends and acquaintances, it becomes easier to turn the world into "us" and "them," and that seems to be what the world has been about, the past few years.
*****
Virtual Universe? I don't WANT a virtual universe that looks just like the one I'm in. A brisk walk in the real universe at least gives me a little cardiovascular exercise and stimulates my other senses. The only thing that really interests me in the virtual universe would be places I can't go, for reasons of money, time, or accessability, or places that just don't or can't exist.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
"she's not sure it is going to be the big hit the IM services want it to be. 'I think it's kind of short-lived....it's one of those faddish things that people are going to want to have for a while" *GROAN*
I know I'm getting old, but come on. This crap has been tried before, and it wasn't a success then, it's not going to succeed now. To be truly revolutionary, you need to either get more immersed in an online world (covered by Everquest, etc), or more graphical with your own face (Covered by web cams, etc). Personally I think the 'next big thing in chatting' is next to impossible to reach because the very things that make it the next big thing, go against what makes chatting work right now. Text. Why not voice. Or vid phone. Or the telephone? Text is great because it allows you to ignore people, allows you time to think about your thoughts before replying. Allows you to be away for a while. Text is also small. Can you imagine trying to run 4 other apps while chatting with someone with those big goofy graphics? Not only that, but how do you manage multiple people? I'm sure some guys are really into 1-on-1 cyber chatting with fake girls, but text allows managing of multiple/random/sporadic/temporary chatters. "So AIM is charging $2 for each SuperBuddy a user buys. The company sees SuperBuddies a little bit like ring tones -- one-off customizations for a communications tool. And AIM hopes its customers won't stop at one SuperBuddy, but that they'll want different ones for different moods." Yea. The dot.com crap just keeps going...
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
Just forget the rancid way people behave on IM for a minute... This graphical chat thing is just absolute garbage! ...Google perhaps?
If anyone has been around for a while you may remember back when Instant Messaging was functional and innovative- nowadays it seems development by these big companies has stagnated-- and these are the new features? 3D heads floating in space??
The only cure for IM is to allow interoperability between clients, this would allow for greater competition-- because as it stands now people are stuck with whoever has a monopoly on IM in their country- AIM in most of the U.S. and MSN Messenger everywhere else...
Could someone (or some company) save IM!?