Pervasive instant messaging – now you see me, now you don’t do!
Instant messaging (IM) enables powerful collaboration with remote colleagues. Sending quick requests and providing quick responses can be done with less interruption to either party involved than a phone call or email. I even find it useful for short conversations with people sitting nearby, as it does not disturb others sitting in the same area and can be done as a parallel task to other work that may be occurring – like participating on a conference call.
I am not here to extol the benefits of IM. However, if you don’t find it to be a powerful business tool for you, then I recommend you stop reading here.
The thing I am here to evangelize is how easily you can stay in touch with IM while on the go! In an effort to maximize my use of IM, I have recently started using a mobile IM client, IM+ All-in-One Messenger for the iPhone, and I am finding it extremely useful as a business communication tool - it allows me to manage my team and interact with my clients and colleagues through IM regardless of my physical location. As a consultant, being available to all my clients on their schedules is critical, and mobile use of IM provides that availability without reducing flexibility of my personal schedule.
One of the enabling aspects of IM is the way it publishes presence to your colleagues – e.g. “Dan is online” or “Dan is away”. Much like spotting someone across the room indicates that person is present in the room, these status icons and messages communicate an equivalent presence for online colleagues. IM+ service acts as a proxy to your IM account and logs in on behalf of you, publishing a persistent “Dan is online” status, and notifying you when messages are received, so you can respond. Using IM+ you are always logged in and available to your friends and colleagues, whether or not you are sitting at your desk.
I settled on IM+ All-in-One Messenger for the iPhone for the following reasons:
- Support for a large set of protocols (AIM/iChat, MSN/Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo!, ICQ, Jabber/Google Talk, Twitter, Skype Chat, Facebook IM, and MySpace IM). This is important for me as it needs to support whatever my clients are using.
- The “always on” presence it offers even when I am not running the IM+ application.
- A well designed user interface.
I use IM+ All-in-One Messenger for the iPhone, but a version of IM+ All-in-One Messenger is also available for just about any modern mobile device (check for supported devices at the IM+ Web site for details on which features are supported on each platform).
I also recommend you search for IM in the appropriate venue for getting new applications for your mobile device and see if another application fits your needs better. I propose the following requirements:
- Must support the IM protocols you use.
- Must run on your mobile device.
- Must publish your presence as available/not available based on your desired status and not whether or not you are actively using the application.
Happy messaging!






































