Buddyzoo is an interesting new site that lets you see which buddies on your AIM buddy list your buddies share with you. Sort of like a six degrees of seperation kind of thing. Very neat. Go check it out and sign up! And tell your friends!
posted by aznblader on Apr 15, 2003 - 13 comments

ICQ Snobs, Sorry: You now must communicate with the AIM Hoy Paloy. Another defeat for Cyber-Elitism!
posted by ParisParamus on Oct 29, 2002 - 78 comments

Trillian Users blocked from AIM service? The bit about this that scares me is the solution to the problem involves disabling the Secure IM functions. Is this a technical glitch or a conspiracy by AOL to reserve the ability to spy on our IM chats? Or build intentional security loopholes?
posted by Jeffy on Jan 29, 2002 - 29 comments

InfoBots are coming. I believe we've touched on this before, but now it seems to be moving from concept to reality: Instant Messenger "buddies" that are actually bots. You send them an IM with a question, such as "Hey pal, what's the weather in Thunder Bay, Ontario?" And it IMs you back with the answer, almost instantaneously. No waiting for messy web sites to load, no funky searches to run. ActiveBuddy has been the most, um, active in developing the technology, but they've been working on it forever without anything to show to the public. Now, it's out there, somewhere. CNET is reporting today that an ActiveBuddy beta bot has been live for a few months; you can play with it right now if you know its name. (And if you do know its name, a tip would be appreciated. I've been jonesing for this for a good while.) A more public version is supposed to be out in a few weeks. Here buddy buddy buddy...
posted by aaron on Apr 25, 2001 - 17 comments

FCC: Open up AOL’s messaging "Federal regulators could force America Online Inc. to open its popular instant-messaging service to rivals as a condition of approving its acquisition of Time Warner Inc." I think this is good news for instant messaging, but I'm never really comfortable with the government forcing such things. What do you think?
posted by ericost on Sep 13, 2000 - 15 comments

Bantu is the holy grail of instant messaging apps. The people behind it have been working on this for a while, and they're now offering a web-based, java client that can talk to ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo instant message clients. If it were a client side application, I'd probably use it, I'm not a big fan of leaving a browser window open all the time. Another drawback is that it can't reach AIM users.
posted by mathowie on Feb 20, 2000 - 3 comments