If there's one application that just about every computer user in the world (and now, many handset users) makes use of, it's instant messenging. By Microsoft's estimates, there are over a quarter of a billion people in the world engaging in some form of instant messaging today and the fact that a real time communications application like IM has gotten that big without experiencing any really serious growing pains is not just a testimony to its scalability, but to our need to have not just information at our fingertips, but people as well.
|