Instant messaging has become a common feature over the
years. It is useful for everyday personal friendly conversation between people
(or groups of people), conversations in the workplace, and online gaming just
for a few examples.
While some messengers have more advanced features, most
offer a number of the same. Lists of features can include the following:
- Add/Delete Friends (Contacts) – Import/Export (even through social media sites or e-mail accounts)
- Voice Chat
- Video Chat/Screen Sharing
- Personal Status Heading
- Status – Online, Offline, Away, Busy, Invisible
- Spell Check
- Tabs for Multiple Messages
- Emojis
- Photo and File Attachment
- Font Customization
- Interface Theme/Skin Customization
- Ability to send Text Messages to Mobile Phones or E-mail Accounts
- Ability to Create Groups/Lists/Favourites out of Added Contacts
Of course, the above list is non-exclusive. As messengers
have changed over the years features keep being added or tweaked in favour of
appealing to those who use the programs.
Personally, I remember using instant messengers back when AOL
launched their messenger, AIM. I also had Windows Live (Microsoft), Yahoo,
Jabber, Skype, Google Talk, Facebook, Myspace, ICQ, Battle.net, and Trillian
over the years. I still have a few of these today.
I’d like to make a quick extra mention of Trillian. If you
haven’t heard of this before and you use multiple messaging services, this is a
great program! It works across a variety of operating systems, to include
mobile. It has the ability to connect to any number of messaging services and
e-mail accounts and gives you access to them all in one user interface. In the
past, the program was able to incorporate messengers such as Skype and Windows
Live, for example, but since they have changed their programming, these are two
of a few that are no longer supported. If you’re using multiple messaging
programs, social sites and e-mail accounts from the following list, you may
want to consider checking this program out!
- AIM
- Bonjour
- Google Talk
- ICQ
- IRC
- Jabber
- VZ
- Yahoo
- Foursquare
- IMAP/POP3 e-mail accounts
Most of the people I talk to will either correspond through
e-mail or through Twitter’s direct messages. For anything else, I normally am
using Facebook Messenger these days. Even though it is a social media site I
don’t like to use as often as others for personal use – the contacts I have
make frequent use of the site, so I do have use messenger daily. Running a
business page and multiple groups also means it’s something I have to make sure
I’m staying on top of. Response time is really important when being in an administrative
role, when it comes to answering and sending instant messages.
A lot of people will use messenger instead of writing in an
e-mail because they think the response time will be faster, which in a sense is
correct. It sounds a bit bad, but people are going to knock out taking care of
social media messages far quicker than those than come through e-mail, even
though it is the preferred method of interaction. It is far easier to get bad
word of mouth for even taking a normal amount of time to respond because a user
is already using a social media site in the first place – they are right there
to publicly voice their anger and displacement.
Using a messenger for inter-office correspondence is quite
common and can get questions answered and information passed along much quicker
than typing up a formal e-mail message, although in certain situations, the
later should still be done. I think the biggest bonus to using a messenger in
the workplace would be when you need to collaborate or get answers from multiple
people in a short amount of time. People in offices and other places of work
are not always on the same schedules so conversing through a group message will
get responses faster than waiting around for a bunch of e-mails, when people
have the time to create them. A message can offer a quick and short response,
which is often all that is needed in some cases.
