The first instant messaging client was created on July, 1996 by 4 Israelis, Yair Goldfinger (age 26 and Chief Technology Officer), Arik Vardi (age 27 and Chief Executive Officer), Sefi Vigiser (age 25 and President), and Amnon Amir (age 24), of the Mirablis company. It was introduced as a new way to communicate on the internet and since then has bloomed into an international phenomenon. Mirablis created ICQ (aka I Seek You) which was released in November of the same year. A year later, ICQ could support 100,000 concurrent users.

The way instant messaging works is that software was installed and then run locally on each computer, which would allow the computers to "talk" or communicate over the Internet. A "client" needs to be downloaded to each computer wishing to communicate. The "client" connects to the ICQ server, using a proprietary protocol. Once logged into the server, you are able to contact other "clients" and send real-time messages. The server creates a temporary file that maintains connection and contact information, allowing users to communicate.

IMs had actually been in existence before all this, but never to such a large degree. Around 1981 at Yale University, Yale used a network that connected its IBM mainframe to the City University of New York. A conferencing system called Message was part of the network (called BITNET) and allowed people to send IMs to each other. It was thought that Message would take up too many resources and clog BITNET, and so the application was tossed. In 1983 Berkeley released 4.2BSD which is a UNIX program. The program had a talk application and allowed users to talk in real-time with others using UNIX. The problem was that with the many different types of UNIX that developed afterwards, the applications would become incompatible with each other. MIT also had a messaging system they developed in 1988, which was used to relay system problems over their UNIX based network. Students and staff used this program to talk to each other, but the limitation was that it could only be used by those at MIT.

AOL (America Online) bought Mirablis and ICQ in June of 1998 for the amount of $287 million (wow!!). They also created their own messaging system and today AOL dominates the IM market, though this may not always be the case, due to conditions of the AOL - Time Warner merger. Other heavyweight companies such as MSN and Yahoo have also designed instant messengers, giving some competition to AOL. On the very campus of Suny Albany, students use instant messaging to talk to their friends and families almost every day. It is even used in the student advisement offices so that colleagues may talk to one another as well as to be notified by the secretary of waiting students. I myself use instant messaging everyday and more often than a telephone. It is most assuredly used at the corporate level as well. Businesses now have a cheap and simple way to communicate with each other at a real-time speed. The advent of XML (extensible markup language) has allowed for further compatibility within IM by providing an open-sourced "extensible" protocol that is interoperable over many IM applications. So what we have today is a very simple way for people to effectively have a phone conversation by way of typing on their computers. Some cell phones today even have IM capabilities. The only major problems today that IM has, is compatibility (which has been greatly helped by XML) and security. But to most people, this is not really a serious issue.

References

History of Instant Messaging Retrieved November 23, 2003, from http://www.show-kit.com/download/samples/with/internet/html/slide6.html

How Stuff Works. Retrieved November 23, 2003, from http://computer.howstuffworks.com/instant-messaging1.htm

Instant Messaging Software. Retrieved November 23, 2003, from http://www.instant-messaging-software.com/history-of-instant-messaging.htm

Karandish, D. (2003). A Brief History of AimTalk a plug in for aol instant messenger. Retrieved November 23, 2003 from http://www.encore-designs.com/aimtalk/aol-instant-messenger-history.html

Leung, K., Kusumo, E., Lesmana, L.,To, D. (2003) Instant Messaging Shaping Communication in Society. Retrieved November 23, 2003 from http://itrs.scu.edu/BTSSUMMER03/btss07/

Ngyuen, J., et al. (2001). Universal IM. Retrieved November 23, 2003 from http://www.geocities.com/utlin312/

Tyson, J. (1998) How Instant Messaging Works Retrieved November 23, 2003 from http://www22.verizon.com/about/community/learningcenter/articles/displayarticle1/0,4065,1021z1,00.html