Intsant messaging is the
boon and
bane of the
world.
Utilizing either the internet or an intranet, instant messaging allows a person to communicate with anyone using the same service in a nearly spontaneous way.
In the workplace, instant messaging can be a great force for communication between employees, removing the need for them to ever leave their cubicles and so increasing productivity. Of course, unless the system is monitored, then this also allows gossip to occur in the same manner, meaning that even though the minions never need leave their cubes, they still manage to trade the juciest bits of information. Of course, if you do monitor the system without telling them, then you get all the information, regardless of who says what about whom.
In the world at large, instant messaging is a useful tool for communication between friends, both distant and local, and enables a person to meet others from all over the world, at least those places in the world where there are internet connections. This produces an interesting effect of cutting through government propaganda. If you think the news services are lying, you can always just call up your friend in some other country and find out what their government is busy telling them. It's amazing how often the reports bear no similarity whatsoever.
While nearly all that can be done through instant messaging can also be done through the use of email, it's a faster, more direct means of communicating with others. Especially as spam email gets more and more prevalent, taking over inboxes. Conversations via email also tend to be far less spontaneous. While instant messaging is often far from instant, it doesn't suffer the delays email sometimes does as it's passed from system to system. If a bottleneck occurs, it could take days for an email message to arrive at it's destination, although most arrive in mere minutes.
The most popular of the instant messaging programs are easily AOL Insant Messenger and ICQ (released by Mirabilis and later bought by AOL). A separate system, called Trillian, is designed to work with a variety of the instant messaging services at once, providing those who have logins on more than one of the services not have to have more than one program open to utilize them all.. Microsoft has designed a system to work with AIM, but originally without permission, so their users were often dropped by AOL's servers. I am uncertain if this is still the case with the MSN IM. Yahoo has also designed an AIM compatible system, but with permission from AOL, so they don't get summarily disconnected. Thus giving the world yet another reason to say "Microsoft sucks."