Product life cycle
I used to be an intensive user of MSN Messenger, some five-odd years ago. This morning I just signed on to see what was happening. Of my 49 contacts, exactly zero were online. A long column of red icons.
Nowadays I too hardly ever log on there -- there's just this one contact who insists on communicating via Messenger only (apart from email, that is). So I talk to her much less too, these days.
Wonder what happened, and why.
Nowadays I too hardly ever log on there -- there's just this one contact who insists on communicating via Messenger only (apart from email, that is). So I talk to her much less too, these days.
Wonder what happened, and why.
posted by Tabula Rasa | 10/05/2009 07:23:00 AM
7 Comments:
Gmail and Gtalk happened for me. But to some extent, messengers just dropped out as well. I rarely login even to Gtalk these days.
1. as Vivek says. And a lot of people seem to use facebook for messaging, too.
2. You're in a different timezone now, so maybe "this morning" you were out of sync with your remaining contacts?
I think it was a stroke of genius for Google to integrate talk with their webmail. That's probably why everyone switched -- that and the fact that their webmail was superior to everyone else's. Gtalk doesn't offer any features lacking elsewhere (well, except that it uses an open protocol -- jabber -- that third party programs can easily connect to, but few people care about that).
I think which IM program you use may also be a function of your social circles. 5 years ago, I kept reading that AIM was the market leader by far, dwarfing MSN and Yahoo (and Gtalk was then a newcomer), but I didn't know anyone who used AIM.
1. What Rahul said.
2. Maybe this is some kind of a network effect -- in reverse?
Let's not forget Skype happened too.
Rahul: IIRC, 5 years ago, America had already moved to Yahoo IM and MSN. AIM belonged to AOL users (aka The Newbies) and God forbid if a techie were to be caught using AIM in 2004 :)
Still remember many tech hiring managers turning up their noses if an prospective employee's resume had an AOL ID on it.
vivek:
many of my msn contacts are not on my gmail list! but i guess rahul is right about gmail+facebook.
rahul:
agree about gmail. and also social circles - i downloaded aim only because i had this one contact who would use it.
(the timezone wouldn't have made that much of a difference - it was afternoon in the US.)
abi:
interesting, no?
km:
possibly a classic fragmentation story. interesting, since these tools were supposed to bring people together.
i wonder what proportion of people let their fb accounts lie dormant for weeks at a stretch.
Off topic question.
"interesting, no?"
Should it be 'yes'? I find that many here use 'yes' but many Indians seem to use 'no'. Which is correct?
gaddeswarup: the "correct" English would be "Interesting, isn't it?" (or, "Interesting, is it not?" though nobody talks like that any more). But "interesting, no?" is a common Indian usage. Some Europeans (Germans in particular) would say "interesting, yes?" but I haven't heard native speakers say that.
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