A recent article from Businessweek Magazine announced that the technology of instant messaging “as we know it,” the pop- up boxes that the millennials have grown up with, will soon be obsolete. The decline in desktop chatting, as reported by AIM, has prompted companies to take a more active role in the growing social network environment. In recent months, the technology of instant messaging has met its match: the once loved IM’s may soon be replaced with other real-time conversation methods, specifically programs that are attached to browsers, and do not necessarily have to be loaded to a desktop like the familiar AOL instant messenger (AIM).
While there is some convenience in frequenting your favorite social network and chatting or catching up with friends in real time, there is still something more secure about signing onto AIM and seeing that well-known buddy list pop up, especially for those who have not invested time in social networking sites or browsers with chat features. Let’s be serious, some older individuals are just getting used to AIM chatting as it is, but it seems more obvious every day, technology waits for no one.
For those of you who have engaged in such social networking sites, specifically facebook, I am sure it is safe to say that you either have initiated conversation, or have received the little box that popped up in the right hand corner of your page with the new facebook chat feature. This feature gives you direct access to anyone on facebook at the time. We can all admit it is entertaining to see what old friends are up to, even those who you have not seen since first grade, but what happens when you are all of a sudden in a real time conversation with them because they see you are currently active on your facebook pages? The web may not be prepared for all of those awkward conversations. As this is coming from a frequent AIM user, times will eventually change, as users may not want to be bothered with separate programs just to talk to someone you can easily talk to on the web. Bridging that gap between secure AIM conversation to web-based conversation will be something that companies will have to attend to in order to attract the optimal amount of customers.
This concept of web chatting also brings forward the desire for companies to keep users on their sites for longer periods. Web advertising will be an enormous new outlet for companies to sell their products or brands, if all real-time conversation becomes web-based. This is a major opportunity for advertisers to cater their messages to specific target markets that are present on certain sites and to track the habits of individual users to make user specific banner ads.
Overall, real-time chatting on the web is definitely coming to the forefront and will most likely find much success with a strong customer and advertising base; however, there will always be a group of die-hard AIM users that will utilize the program until it truly becomes obsolete. Where will you chat?
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2008/tc20081116_918455.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories
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2 comments:
I completely agree with you on this topic. AIM and other messaging systems are starting to become absolete. While I usually sign on when at my computer, I rarely ever use it anymore. While I don't use any social networks or blogs besides facebook, facebook alone has taken the place of aim for me. When i want to leave my friends messages for later that arent urgent, I turn to facebook, not aim. Some of this has to do with past failures of AIM to get messages to people. An example would be if I leave a message on my friends screen name while theyre away, but then they sign off. Do they get the message? Don't they?
With facebook comes security. I know that my friend is going to get the message no matter what, short of someone hacking into their account.
Where I differ with your blog is that facebook and the internet are making AIM obsolete on their own. When it comes to getting ahold of someone instantly, instead of 'instant messaging' I instead turn to my phone.
In the past few years, texting has sky rocketed. Many kids our age have free or near free texting, as well as minutes. Not to mention everyone has a cell phone and has it on them constantly. Since its easy to store numbers and put direct names on those numbers, texting and cell phone calling has eliminated the 'instant' out of AIM.
I agree with the previous posts that AOL Instant Messaging is becoming more and more outdated. I am a frequent user of Facebook, but I still use AIM quite a bit. I very rarely use the new Facebook chat application because I personally like AIM better. Although AIM is being constantly updated, I still use an older version because that is what I am most comfortable with. I am not in favor of AIM being phased out; I feel that it is very easy to use, it is convenient, and it is a familiar program. When I think about other networking devices such as Facebook, MySpace, or Skype, I don’t categorize them in the same group as AIM. Facebook is so much more complicated than Instant Messenger because there are thousands of other applications that people can utilize on the Facebook (etc…) network whereas Instant Messaging is a simple and user friendly device.
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