Do you know what IM is?

By: Venet Osmani

Using the abbreviation IM can conjure up different things for different people. Some think it means Instant Money or Impossible Mission. This article however, describes the Instant Messaging utility, which is more often than not referred to as IM.

The inspiration to write this article came from talking to people who didn't quite understand the concept behind Instant Messaging. Surprisingly, some of them have even used computers for years.

As the name implies, IM is a way to exchange messages in an instant fashion. It's possible that many people reading this article will have used email and exchanged text messages on their mobile phone (SMS). Email and SMS, to some extent, can be considered instant, because it takes only a few seconds to receive a text message, and maybe a bit more time for email. So, how is Instant Messaging different from e-mail and SMS?
IM differs profoundly from the above services, in that it has an extra element to it called presence. An explanation of this concept of presence is follows.

With email and SMS, you just send the message, without any regard about the state of the recipient. Even though it's possible that the mobile is turned off, or she is at a meeting or not in front of the computer to check e-mails.

With IM, before the message is sent, user availability and state can be checked, so one of the things you'll know is how likely it is for the recipient to respond to your message. The concept of IM revolves around the idea of having a Buddy List with all your contacts in it, such as friends, co-workers, family, etc.

Each of these contacts has a status. For example, a co-worker could be at a meeting, so she sets her IM programme to Meeting and her status is instantly updated on your screen. A friend could be available for chat so he sets his status to Available etc, etc.

You can set your status to be anything at all, although some IM programmes restrict your status to a set of preset values.
Also, with IM communication is more instant. Users tend to treat instant messages with higher priority than they do e-mails and this may be partly due to the fact that a new instant message will flash on your screen until it is dealt with.

There are many IM systems out there such as MSN Messenger, YIM - Yahoo!, AIM America On Line, ICQ etc. However, a major problem that currently exists is interoperability. These systems are not compatible with each other. This means, your friends using MSN, cannot contact you, unless you use MSN as well. This is a way for companies to encourage more users to use their networks. However it's not all bad news. The Jabber IM platform that is currently being deployed at the TSSG has developed mechanisms to ensure seamless interoperability between closed systems, such as those mentioned above. For more information on Jabber see next week's column.