Been meaning to write something about this for a while now.. and it’s based on the following observation: I don’t log into MSN Messenger much any more. When I do, I don’t use it that much.. Pidgin will sit there idling, with my “away” or “busy” status showing… Back in the day, it used to be something I would log into as soon as I logged onto my laptop, see who was online and probably start a conversation or two. Years ago, in what I would describe as the MSN glory days when I was still using Windows, I had Messenger Plus! installed to totally customise my MSN experience and I would at times have upwards of 30 contacts online on an evening and be talking to several of them at once. Not so much these days.
Is this typical IM conversation a familiar scenario to you?
“Hi.
Hey.
How are you?
Fine thanks, you?
Yup, fine.”
……
And what’s the point of even bothering with that??
Is instant messaging itself dying?? A lot of people now prefer to write a message on my Facebook wall or send me a message (which is essentially an email) via the same website. It doesn’t have to be instant any more.. It’s fine to post a Facebook message and wait for a reply. If people do want an instant or near-instant response they know to SMS me. The fad of being able to instantly communicate with other people via the Internet seems to me at least to be well and truly over.
Has instant messaging died out completely then? No, definitely not. I wonder if it’s just the demographic similar to me, those who have embraced Facebook and now use it for most of their online communication. I still idle in a fair few IRC channels, mainly ones related to open source projects I have an interest in and on the whole the channels I’m in now are used regularly…
So IM is not dead but it would be interesting to see what MSN traffic has been like since Facebook has really taken off.
Hmm, I also have found that I tend to use MSN less, mainly since coming to university back in 2005 (which is also when I got on Facebook, although of course back then it was a university-only thing). Or perhaps it’d be better to say that the number of people I speak to on MSN isn’t as high as it once was - it tends to be a closer group of friends I speak to on MSN, and I guess occasional randoms when they have forum or web site-related things to talk about. Otherwise, random messages are indeed more likely to go on Facebook. A number of my friends are also in assorted IRC channels, so that’s another less intrusive way of speaking to them.
Part of it is probably also the fact that I spend more time doing things that don’t involve being on the computer these days, too, of course!
@Owen Rudge: “I spend more time doing things that don’t involve being on the computer these days” …. Haha, yeah right
Meh, to me, this is not the case. There has allways been both instant and non-instant messaging things online (’allways’ as in since i started actively uing it), and there’s still a use for both (usually longer) non-instant messages, and the instant messanging conversations. I currently talk more over IM, really, and it’s more like a real life conversation…
Also, some talk over facebook or similar with constantly updating their wall or inbox or guestbook, so the conversation really has the speed of a IM-conversation!
I’ve found the same, really - IM for me is pretty much dead. However, I know that my younger sister is pretty much as addicted to it as I used to be - so perhaps it’s just a young teenage thing?