instant messaging

instant messaging (IM), form of text-based communication in which two persons participate in a single conversation over their computers or mobile devices within an Internet-based chatroom. IM differs from “Chat,” in which the user participates in a more public real-time conversation within a chatroom where everyone on the channel sees everything being said by all other users.

In its simplest form, instant messaging (IM) seeks to accomplish two goals: monitoring presence for the purpose of sending presence-based alerts to users in the chatroom and messaging. The software relies on a central server or servers to monitor presence. When a user logs on to an IM system, the login is recognized, and other online users who have that address listed as a “buddy,” or friend, are notified of the user’s presence. The software establishes a direct connection between users so they can talk to each other synchronously, in real time. IM has a long history, but it has only been in the late 1990s that IM applications have come to the forefront, due to ongoing battles between commercial ventures engaged in its development.

One of the precursors to a formal IM was the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), which originated in 1961 at MIT’s Computation Center. CTSS was housed in a large mainframe. Users connected to the mainframe through remote dial-up terminals to send messages back and forth to one another and share files. CTSS soon grew beyond MIT, allowing several hundred users from a number of colleges to converse with one another by 1965, thereby adopting modern IM-like qualities.

IM was invented in 1971 as a chat function on a government computer network. American computer scientist Murray Turoff created IM as part of the Emergency Management Information Systems and Reference Index (EMISARI) for the Office of Emergency Preparedness. Its original purpose was to help exchange information which would aid the U.S. government during emergencies. One of EMISARI’s first uses was to facilitate communication among government officials to assist the anti-inflation wage and price control efforts of the Nixon Administration. EMISARI users accessed the system through teletypewriter terminals linked to a central computer. EMISARI continued to be used by the U.S. government for management of emergency situations until 1986. The EMISARI chat function was called the Party Line and was originally developed to replace telephone conferences. Party Line users all had to log on to the same computer over phone lines and read the text of the chats on Teletype units.

During the 1970s, the first public chat software emerged. “Talk,” designed to work within the UNIX operating system, also required that users be logged on to the same computer to use the program. This was truly the forerunner of IM systems, since users could send a message to anyone else on the system and a note would pop up on the user’s terminal. This software was often used in combination with “Finger,” a program that allowed users to determine whether one user or another was present online at the time.

The first large-scale rollout of IM came from America Online (AOL). IM had been a part of the AOL browser as early as 1988, in the form of lists of acquaintances that let AOL customers know when their friends, relatives, or other acquaintances who also used AOL were online. Such lists were called “buddy lists” after the rollout of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) in 1997. AIM flourished, and, as the popularity of the Internet grew, so did the demand for software systems that allowed real-time conversation. The late 1980s also saw the introduction of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) software for group conversations, and by the mid-1990s other IM software, such as ICQ (or “I Seek You”) for non-AOL Internet users, also became available. An Israeli company, Mirabilis, launched ICQ in 1996 as a free messaging program. AOL later bought out ICQ but kept the ICQ interface intact, even though it competed with AOL’s own IM system. By the early 2000s, several IM systems were in use on the Internet, with multiple versions for different computer platforms (Windows, Mac OS, Linux). Such systems included Apple’s iChat, which made its debut in 2002 during the rollout of OS X Jaguar, the third version of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system, Skype, an IM and video conferencing service that was introduced in 2003, and Google Talk (which is also known as Gchat or Google Chat), which was first linked to the company’s Gmail service in 2005. IMs became linked to social media platforms with the release of MySpaceIM by MySpace in 2006, Facebook’s Facebook Chat in 2008, and Facebook Messenger in 2011.