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A little commentary on this report from the AP by yours truly. You’ll find the full text of the article in our news section.
Quote:quote:NEW YORK (AP) — America Online remains the leading provider of instant messaging services, though Yahoo! and MSN are catching up, according to a study released Wednesday.Note that AOL’s figures include both AIM and ICQ combined (even though they’re really separate products).
Quote:quote:Jupiter Media Metrix, an Internet measurement company, said the percentage of home instant messaging users who subscribe to multiple services grew to 29 percent in September, up from 24 percent a year earlier.No surprise here. Since instant messengers are free and mostly smallish downloads, a LOT of people run more than one. Besides, to reach all your friends, you’re likely to need more than one (some are on AIM, other MSN, etc.). This could bode well for future interoperability pacts and in the near-term, for the specialized messengers like Imici, Trillian, Jabber and Odigo that communicate with multiple networks.
Quote:quote:More than 53 million Americans used at least one of the three from home in September, a 28 percent increase from last year. More than 41 million used an AOL service such as Instant Messenger or ICQ. More than 18 million used MSN Messenger, and 12 million used Yahoo! Messenger.AOL’s increase over September 2000 was 21 percent, compared with 94 percent for MSN and 25 percent for Yahoo.
A HUGE increase for MSN. The 800-pound gorilla has been throwing its weight around, and it shows in these figures. Yahoo has also had some very nice gains, largely because of their very nice product. A little anti-AOL, anti-Microsoft sentiment helps, too.
Quote:quote:For AOL’s competitors, the growth was larger at work.AOL had 8.8 million users in September, an increase of 17 percent. MSN went up 88 percent to 4.8 million, and Yahoo 83 percent to 3.4 million.
Very interesting figures. Clearly AIM and ICQ are targeted at the consumer market. MSN and Yahoo have both had better support for corporate firewalls and proxys longer than AOL’s offerings.
Quote:quote:Instant messages are short bursts of text sent instantly over the Internet. They were made popular by AOL’s development of “buddy lists,” which let users know when friends are online and ready to receive messages.Duh!
Quote:quote:They have replaced phone calls for many teen-agers and have helped the deaf communicate.True and true. I’ve never even really thought about whether the person I’m chatting with was deaf or not. On a personal note, I’m 60% deaf in my left ear; not bad enough to keep me from hearing most conversations, but sometimes it’s a strain. Could this explain my comfort with IM?
Quote:quote:Unlike e-mail, instant messaging services do not work with one another, meaning users must subscribe to more than one to reach friends who use a competing product.Which is why we run more than one product, or use one of the interoperable products. Hopefully users will demand interoperability, and the Big 3 will provide it!
Quote:quote:Meanwhile, another Internet measurement company, Nielsen/NetRatings, said Internet usage reached record levels in October as 115 million Americans went online. The total represents a four percent increase from September and a 15 percent jump from the same period last year.Monthly Internet usage had been dropping since reaching nearly 114 million in May.
Interesting that there were such phoenomenal gains in IM in spite of the overall downturn in Internet usage.
Quote:quote:Nielsen/NetRatings said Tuesday the biggest growth was in home and fashion sites.“As security concerns rise, there’s more interest in nesting activities, taking care of the family and the home, buying a nice set of sheets,” said Sean Kaldor, vice president of analytical services.
He also said people may have deferred such purchases from September.
Nielsen/NetRatings also estimated that more than 176 million Americans, or 62 percent of the population, had access to the World Wide Web. That’s a jump from 156 million, or 57 percent, a year ago.
So given that many people are wary of flying, or even opening their snail-mail, could we be at verge of an IM explosion?
Read the full article.
Jeff Hester
BigBlueBall.com
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