Instant Messaging 2.0? Yahoo! Messenger Still Not
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice now includes plug-ins “designed to let people to do things like track eBay auctions, see friends’ wish lists on Amazon.com, collaborate real-time on event planning and compare calendars with contacts” (via ZDNet).
Guess what? I don’t care! I don’t need my chat application to do any of that - I already have a web browser.
But what I do need it to help me with is to better manage my interactions with those on my buddylist. If presence is the new dial tone, then I need better ways to manage my presence. I want to be able to make my availability known to certain subsets of my contacts.
Perhaps, for example, I’d like to be available via IM to a group of people I am working with but not all of my business contacts. The only option I have right now is make my IM “invisible” to everyone. That’s obviously not useful if I do want to take advantage of IM for a subset of all my contacts.
Presence based systems - AIM, Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, and others - could benefit from this concept across the board. But as I mentioned in the past, social networks could utilize a similar idea too, by refining the types of contacts in your network and changing the way each contact can access and interact with you.
Right now, the only way I’m accomplishing this separation is by having two different AIM accounts. One is exclusively for work and the other is personal. I can run both through Trillian but I have the option to shutdown the personal one when I really need to concentrate or to run only the personal account on the weekends.
If presence is to become the new dial tone, this functionality will have to evolve - and I’m surprised it hasn’t already. For me, better presence management is more important than getting Yahoo! Messenger to support RSS. When we have that, then we can talk about Instant Messaging 2.0.
June 20, 2006 at 7:21 pm
You might want to brush up your research on Yahoo! Messenger before you write about it for others. It has offered selective “stealth” settings (providing presence management distinctions for individual and group) for several versions now. These statements from your post are not accurate:
“The only option I have right now is make my IM “invisible” to everyone.”
“Right now, the only way I’m accomplishing this separation is by having two different AIM accounts. One is exclusively for work and the other is personal.”
From Yahoo! Messenger:
http://messenger.yahoo.com/stealth.php
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/messenger/messenger8/managingim/managingim-21.html
June 21, 2006 at 9:24 am
Todd…I admit I wasn’t aware of this particular feature because I’m not a Yahoo! Messenger user. I just used this news to make a more generalized request to presence based IM systems (if you notice, I don’t hit on Yahoo! Messenger specifically, except in regards to their new plug-ins).
That being said, I did download Yahoo! Messenger to try it out. After significant install problems, I did get it up and ‘running’. But it just sat indefinitely when I tried logging in - and I tried multiple Yahoo! IDs.
BTW…don’t you think you should mention that you work for Yahoo!? I think that’s only fair considering the defensive tone you took.
Thanks for the heads-up. I stand corrected on this feature in Yahoo! Messenger - although, I’m still not going to use it because I don’t know anyone who does.
June 22, 2006 at 11:26 am
Ken, perhaps the problems is not the availability of customizable settings (”invisible to this group,” “not invisible to that group”) but the social expectation that when you are viewed as “online” or “available” that you automatically MUST respond to the IM? Shouldn’t the situation be the same as answering the phone — just because the phone rings; you don’t have to answer it. With caller ID on the phone you can add an even greater level of control. Why should it be any different with Instant Messaging? - Dennis
June 22, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Dennis…the difference is that IM is presence based. When I call you on the phone, I don’t actually know if you are there or not. So, it is an expectation issue, as you wisely pointed out. If I see someone online and IM them, I know they are there and are purposefully ignoring me.
It’s similar to sending someone to voicemail via a cellphone. I used to do that all the time and had a number of people get annoyed with me because they knew I was available but wouldn’t take their call.
I’m not sure we can change these expectations but I’d be interested to hear your ideas.
June 22, 2006 at 4:13 pm
As you say, it is partly an issue of managing expectations, and partly an issue of how accurate the “presence” information is. If I answer the phone a split second before an IM message pops up, am I obliged to excuse myself from the phone call in order to type “can’t talk” or switch my IM status to “busy”?
It seems we’re talking a matter of etiquette here, in addition to the issue of whether or not the presence information visible at the other end is accurate and timely.