Instant Messaging Prior to 1996, communication was a slow and deliberate process, considering one's choices were limited to telephones, letters, and face-to-face contact. Even E-mail took a while to send and receive replies and was too slow for some. The idea of sending discussion online was beginning to blossom in the mid-nineties with the introduction of online bulletin and discussion boards. Online services such as AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy offered instant messaging to their own customers, …showed first 75 words of 1002 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1002 total…risk of missing important messages. Currently, spim is not a problem, but the instant messaging services are preparing themselves with spim-blocking devices in anticipation of a much larger boom later on. The amount of users of instant messaging services is growing everyday, ranging in ages from 10 to 50, from pre-teens chatting about the latest boybands to corporate bigwigs discussing an upcoming luncheon. Instant messaging is a great leap forward in making technology faster, easier, and useful.