INSTANT MESSENGERS - A GUIDE INTO HOW THEY WERE CREATED
Instant messengers are now part of online chat, but when I first chatted online they were not part of the chat community, you had to make do with very poor chat rooms, they were fun none the less Microsoft always had a good chat room.
In 1996 everything changed with the release of something called ICQ, which still runs today, ICQ (I seek You) revolutionised online chatting you can still download this but it is somewhat dated, so I thought I would go through the online chat messengers.
ICQ (I SEEK YOU)
First chat messenger there was, changed the face of chatting online forever, somewhat dated now and I haven’t used it in years and don’t think I would want to as there is far too much spam on there, it’s also easily abused, but you might want to check it out, Microsoft indeed tried to buy ICQ out when they discovered the power that ICQ had as we all know now Microsoft went on to create their own messenger.
AOL MESSENGER
Shortly after ICQ Aol launched their messenger which I have to be honest I hardly ever used and I don’t think many people ever have lol, In the few times I did use it I nearly got hacked once and just couldn’t quite understand how it worked, Aol messenger has hardly changed in all the years it’s been running, hardly anyone uses this to chat nowadays.
MSN MESSENGER
Msn messenger was released some time after ICQ came out, msn messenger when it was first released was complete rubbish lol, in fact it was un-usable you couldn’t do very much and your conversations were cut off a lot of the time, so things started very badly lol, but things improved very quickly for Msn messenger and for people in the UK it is the messenger that people use to chat with the most now, it still suffers from bad privacy settings but MSN have tried to change this with the new release of MSN MESSENGER LIVE, which I hate but we will have to all get used to it, as we are all going to be using it eventually.
YAHOO MESSENGER
Yahoo also released their own messenger and funnily enough Yahoo messenger is the most popular Messenger on the net, I have to confess I don’t use it lol, but Its very popular in the USA, that’s what makes it so popular, it is a very good messenger and far better than msn messenger technically, but doesn’t have the ease of use that msn messenger has or the presentation it think that’s why lots of people prefer msn messenger to chat.
OTHER MESSENGERS
There are a whole host of other messenger programs a lot of them branded, Odigo messenger and a BT messenger, there was an orange messenger and many more needless to say these have all fallen by the wayside as there is no way they can compete with MSN and YAHOO, their dominance will continue.
EFFECTS ON CHAT ROOMS
Instant messengers have indeed had an effect on chat rooms, the problem with instant messengers is they take people out of chat rooms, so really they have started to kill the chat room off, weather the chat room will die completely remains to be seen, I think there will always be a place for chat rooms on the internet.
SECURITY ISSUES
Instant messenger will always be a security risk, as you are in a client to client talk with someone there is always a danger someone could gain access to your pc or access to personal information if your pc isn’t properly protected, there is also the added problem with people keeping personal conversations, as you are supposed to inform someone before you save the conversation how many people do that lol!!!!
I’m sure this might stir up many a legal issue if someone tried to use this information as evidence for a case.