Once the province of teenagers lying their way to happiness in America Online chatrooms, instant messaging has gone mainstream, with free software that lets any Internet user carry on real-time written conversations.
Home users can wade through the several million people who are on-line each night, finding the friends, acquaintances and family members they want to chat with. Professional users have an alternate venue to a conference call (some of the clients can accommodate instant chatting among 30 different people) and a way to cut through the problem of slow-moving e-mail. Some companies, including AOL, even use the instant messaging as a way to communicate internally; other companies, such as ichat, plan to market their instant messaging products to companies for use over intranets or the Internet.
So far, the instant messaging companies seem to be trying three different business models to make money while keeping the service free for general users. Some are banking on advertising. Some are licensing their software to Internet service providers or other Internet services. Still others see the potential to build a corporate client base. For all of them, instant messaging “allows users to regain control of their out-of-control electronic communications,” said Kate Delhagen, an Internet analyst with Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.
The ability for one computer to communicate instantly with another isn’t new. Back in the Internet’s pre-Web days, users could find one another on-line by executing the Unix “finger” command and engage in direct communication via Internet Relay Chat (and they still can). Between the development of the graphical portion of the Net known as the World Wide Web and the invasion of novice masses to this new medium, these rather arcane features were a concept crying out to be exploited on the Web itself.
About two years ago, AOL offered its members the ability to put friends, family and colleagues on “Buddy Lists,” so a user was alerted each time one of these “buddies” logged on to the service. AOL already had instant messaging, and buddy lists made the feature more useful–and popular. More than 12.5 million AOL screen names currently have active buddy lists.
Soon, AOL will officially launch its trademarked Buddy Lists and Instant Messenger products for all Net users, not merely AOL subscribers. A beta version has been available free over the Net (http://www.aol.com/) since May. The new software will also be free, but it will carry advertising.
Although AOL was first with Buddy Lists and instant messaging on its proprietary service, Mirabilis, based in Tel Aviv, launched similar services for general Internet users with its ICQ (as in “I seek you”) 10 months ago. ICQ (http://www.icq.com) now has 3 million registered users, the company says.
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In addition to allowing a user to create a personal contact list, ICQ provides a user-status list (on-line, away, do not disturb, privacy and off-line), conference chat that supports unlimited numbers of users, on and off-line MessageDirect function and the ability to write a message now and send it later.
Others in the market:
– Excite’s Personal Access List (http://pal.excite.com/go.
webx?98@@pal/index.html). Features include the ability to be visible or invisible to all other users or only certain groups of users that you can cluster together.
– Ichat Pager (http://www.ichat.
com/pager/index.html). Among the features: a user profile function to keep you abreast of ongoing discussions, chat rooms or forums that might interest you; a “Hide Me” function to restrict access to your user profile information, and the ability to transfer files and send instant audio and video to other users.
– Abbott Systems Inc.’s AtChat (http://www.abbottsys.com/atchat.html). A demo version is free, but the product costs $39. In return, Abbott Systems saves its customers from advertising, registration, monthly fees and from going through a central computer, so it’s fast and private.
– PeopleLink Inc. (http://www.peoplelink.com).A number of services, including AltaVista, ChoiceMall, CitySearch, Concentric Network, EarthLink and Four11, soon will offer co-branded versions of PeopleLink on their sites.
– OnLive Technologies Inc. (http://www.onlive.com). The company mainly makes products that enable group conferencing over the Web, but offers LiveLists for instant messaging. One cool feature is that, if you walk away from your desk, your correspondents will know your screen saver has turned on and will not instantly respond to their messages.
– Tribal Voice Inc.’s PowWow (http://www.powwow.com). The service claims 2 million registered members and has the standard features plus one unusual one: It barks like a dog when someone has sent you a correspondence.