Exploring Instant Messaging

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
• Facebook
• Google Talk
• ICQ
• IRC
• Jabber
• VZ
• Yahoo
• Foursquare
• Twitter
• 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.

VOIP - Skype

These days I don’t get much use out of Skype. When I was in the military, I was overseas for over seven years. This is the time when I used it the most. I connected with family back home, especially during the holidays. I remember having some kind of trouble initially because of the countries being different. They had kept trying to insist that I needed to purchase credits to use the program, but I was able to work out getting a United States number and everything was smooth after that.

On occasion I have used Skype to collaborate with other YouTube artists on videos and song parodies. I once was on a phone call with someone producing a science fiction podcast, who recorded my lines through the call as well. I have used it on multiple occasions to live screen share and provide instructions or visuals through calls to someone. The most recent use I have gotten out of the program was to get job testing instructions from a company I had applied to this last year. They delivered the instructions and followed up during and after the test through the messaging portion of the system.

For the most part, however, I use Google Voice to make phone calls and if I need to use video with a call, I can do so through GoogleHangout, or more often – Facebook Calling.

Anyone can benefit from using Skype I would say. I feel as though it has a more business type of feel to it these days than it used to. The mobile application of the program is wonderful for people on the go, but does require an internet connection, so you will need to be on wi-fi or use your mobile service as an internet connection to make use of it. Strictly as a messenger it works great! For video, it is good for domestic calling, but when you start to make international calls, it can become a hassle, although it is still low cost compared to other services. The biggest downfall I think Skype has going for it is that group calling is gated behind their premium service.