Instant Messenger - Forums Addon?

[Randy]

Heeeeeeeeeey MARC!!!

Does this thing-a-bob have IM capability?

For us regular registered types it would be neat.

Like right now there are about 8 or 10 folks logged in and to just be able to say - HI!!! - would be OK.

See ya

[Marc]

There may be a hack for IM but it's not built in. In your profile there is a place for ICQ, AOL and such - but of course the other person has to have it.

As I get to know the software and read more I'll see if there's a hack like that.

[Marc]

I haven't looked for the hack yet - but here's the deal for now. If you look at:
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You'll see every message someone leaves includes the 'Profile' button. And there are a lot of other links - but I don't want to write the text book here. If you click on the 'Profile' link you'll see something like this:
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As you can see, there's the AOL, ICQ and Yahoo. I have my ICQ number in there but to be honest I never much liked it - rare occasions. I rarely run it. I think there is a hack where if someone enters their ICQ number (or Yahoo or AOL), a buton appears near the profile button and it even opens the program. But I have enough gong on right now to risk hacking the software. It's more time consuming than you may realize and can make upgrades a nightmare.

As far as something realtime - there are options like Java 'chat' solutions. But - the server gets a pretty good workout right now. That's pretty cpu intensive.

But - the real reason is this has come up numerous times (believe it or not) before. My experience is that in this environment most people are back and forth and - well, posting messages is one thing but the nature of the site - and the people who visit and why and they're at wok usually - stuff like that - doesn't lend to realtime chat.

I'm answering in a serious tone because I have really thought about this. It was first discussed in the forums before the last forums - the original threaded forums I had here (and technicaly they're still here). But we'll not go back that far. Only to 1998. See this Thread

I will, however, research it next time I'm over at the vBulletin home forums to see what the current status is. What I really want is voice/picture - like Microsoft meeting or whatever their program is (which we tried a few times but there were always problems. Another one was See-U-C-Me or something. But then we're REALLY talking bandwidth.

One last thought. The 'private message' feature here isn't quite the same, but if someone is online and you leave a private message for them. The next time they go through a link it 'pages' them that there's a private message. I've done that a couple of times with energy, Al I think - and a couple other people. The downside to this is the listing is a 20 minute timeout. That means that even though somone is listed as 'online', it is possible they left 19 minutes ago and the software is waiting for minute 20 to pass to mark the user as being gone (offline). The timer is set at 20 minutes from the last link traveled. remember - this all works in with the 'New Posts' deal. And when you think about it it makes sense. There is no way for any site to know if you've left unless they use a refresh call. Which uses bandwidth. Serious bandwidth. Not to mention log files of ungodly size.

[Randy]

No problemo there marc. I was just curious. I don't even know my ICQ. I think its about 180 or so because that's how I got into Mensa.

Later

[Marc]

See http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/2001/11/14/im.html

Watch out! If you go to the link - there's a (gasp!) POLL. I voted....

NEW YORK -- Office workers are doubling the time they spend swapping Instant Messages, with the number of minutes spent Instant-Messaging at work in the United States climbing to 4.9 billion, Jupiter Media Metrix said in a report released Wednesday.

The Internet research firm also said that the number of unique users at work rose 34 percent to 13.4 million. Minutes of instant-messaging at home rose 48 percent to 13.6 billion minutes from a year-earlier.

"While the adoption rate of instant-messaging continues to outpace that of the Internet, the time spent using the applications demonstrates even more profoundly the significant role instant-messaging plays online," said Charles Buchwalter, vice president of media research at Jupiter Media Metrix. "We first noticed the explosive popularity of messaging in the home environment, but work-place usage is following a similar trajectory."

The report also found that AOL Time Warner Inc.'s (AOL.N) instant messaging service, which allows users to chat real-time, remains the leading brand at both home and work, but rivals Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O) and Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT.O) MSN were aggressively increasing their reach and total usage minutes.

AOL, with its AIM and ICQ messaging services, has 41.7 million users at home, up 21 percent from a year-earlier. MSN users rose 94 percent to 18.5 million while Yahoo! users rose 25 percent to 11.9 million.

Microsoft, especially, has made an aggressive push in the last year to grab market share from rival AOL with such efforts as offering special deals for Internet access and integrating its messenger into its new operating system, Windows XP.

At work the race is a bit closer. AOL has 8.8 million users; MSN has about 4.8 million users and Yahoo has 3.4 million users.

Since the companies' services do not allow users of one to chat with the other, Jupiter said 29 percent of messenger users utilize two or more competing brands at home, up from 24 percent a year-earlier.

The percentage of AOL users that used a competing brand in September was 30 percent; 44 percent for MSN; and 59 percent for Yahoo.