Instant Messaging: A history, a study, a commentary

Instant Messaging Prior to 1996, communication was a slow and deliberate process, considering one's choices were limited to telephones, letters, and face-to-face contact. Even E-mail took a while to send and receive replies and was too slow for some. The idea of sending discussion online was beginning to blossom in the mid-nineties with the introduction of online bulletin and discussion boards. Online services such as AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy offered instant messaging to their own customers, …

…risk of missing important messages. Currently, spim is not a problem, but the instant messaging services are preparing themselves with spim-blocking devices in anticipation of a much larger boom later on. The amount of users of instant messaging services is growing everyday, ranging in ages from 10 to 50, from pre-teens chatting about the latest boybands to corporate bigwigs discussing an upcoming luncheon. Instant messaging is a great leap forward in making technology faster, easier, and useful.