Featured VoIP Providers that Offer Instant Messaging

Instant messaging, also known as “IM” or chat, is a technology that allows users near real-time text based communication between two or more parties over a network connection. Although the ability to communicate with a person via text in near real-time makes this capability different than email, the ability to leave a message for a person who is offline narrows that difference.

Instant messaging is an Internet-based GUI (Graphical User Interface) tool that was made popular by ICQ in the mid 1990s. This was followed by AOL’s Instant Messenger in 1997. In 2000, an Open Source application and Open Standards-based protocol named Jabber was launched. Jabber servers were able to act as gateways to other IM protocols, and this tool reduced the need to run multiple chat clients on one browser. Most recently, IM features the addition of video conferencing, VoIP and Web conferencing services, desktop sharing capabilities, IP radio and IPTV – all these features seek to combine the utilies of audio and video for a real-time communication experience that can surpass any current telephonic technology.

The term, “instant messenger,” is a service mark of Time Warner, and it cannot be used in software that is not affiliated with AOL in the United States.

How It Works

The user who wants to operate an instant messaging feature must choose from various clients in service. Most often, a user will choose the service that most of their friends or business associates use. But, the limitations provided by the boundary of choosing just one client can be eliminated by using a Jabber-like client that allows use of several different text messaging services.

Also, many social networks online allow users to flow a text messaging service into a personal Web page so that friends or business associates can tap into a text messaging session online.

Mobile Instant Messaging, or MIM, is a presence-enabled messaging service that focuses on transposing the desktop experience to the mobile or wireless device. Twitter, for instance, allows a user to post messages privately or publicly from any computer or from a mobile phone or from VoIP services. Now, any tool that can be used to send a text message can be used to send text messages privately or publicly through a connected network system.

Things to Look For

The advantage of using a network to connect with text messages to one person or to thousands of individuals has proven advantageous to businesses that want to use this medium for marketing. This type of communication is advantageous to the receiver as well, as the person who receives text messages can block or eliminate a person from any text messaging list.

Users also might look for features such as an ‘autosave’ that saves text messages into an email program or into another file for future reference. Other features include the ability to contact someone who is offline to receive the message when they return, and the ability to include or to block individuals from communication. Other features, as mentioned previously, include the ability to send video as well as audio messages along with the textual format.

The item to note is that most operators have traditionally shied away from mobile-broadband networks for VoIP and IM for reasons including network capacity and latency issues. Be aware that some companies would rather push clients into a flat-priced data network service rather than offering services such as text messaging, as the latter often pulls revenues from the operator. Other companies may offer text messaging through VoIP and mobile services at a higher rate to compensate for loss of revenue.

VoIP Providers that Offer Instant Messaging