Signing in with The Latest Online Instant Messengers

Instant Online Messengers are the best form of social networking service over internet. Messengers like Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Rediff BOL and Google Talk have served millions of people to be linked with people from across the globe, make new friends, increase their social boundaries and also share information of different kinds. So considering all these aspects I thought of reviewing all these softwares and present to you a deep study of what is better for whom. so Let’s get started err Sign In.

1.Features

Instant Message Box

Instant Messaging has always been the most important part of these online messengers. All of them have a dedicated person to person (1:1) chat box which is preferably called Instant Message box or Personal Message box. The features there include

• host of smileys, (share your actual mood with smileys)
• Buzzing (shake your friend up with a BUZZ!)
• IM-Vironment (basically chat box background themes),
• Font styles etc.

Considering all these features, Yahoo Messenger leaps ahead of any other competitor. With its soothing set up and rich features, Yahoo Messenger has almost everything that you may need while chatting with your friend. AOL and Rediff are the next options.

Conference Room

What if you, with a group of friends want to chat together? There is a place for that too. You people can easily create a conference and ask selected people to come to that and have a chat. So next time if you miss the latest gossips in your college canteen. Don’t worry. Just wait till your friends are back and after that invite them to conference. That’s it.

Here too Yahoo messenger is ahead but not much. The Rediff bol or AIM conference facilities are good too.

Call Others from Your Messenger

Well yes, latest messengers have this facility too. You can call anyone through a PC-to-PC protocol. You only need a mic for that. Connect to the internet, log into messenger. Find a friend or find a stranger from any country and call him/her. That is it. The voice will be as clear as you can hear on phone. Though this is essentially not a VOIP (Voice over IP)service, rather VOIM (Voice over Instant messenger), but who cares? Again Yahoo has started its own service of calling from PC-to-phone facility within a very cheap rate. So all these advancements will help us to communicate more.

Though, I would say, in this segment, SKYPE wins, hands down. It is the best and by far the most versatile and noiseless calling messenger and supports the VOIP.

Note -> G-Talk doesn’t essentially use PC-to-PC protocol rather it uses XMPP- Jabber. Anyhow, the call facility in Google Talk is good but by no means outstanding.

Some More Features

• You can share files/photo/music files/video files everything within the messenger only. All you need to do is to drop the file on your friend’s IM box and you are done!

• Almost all the messengers support webcam sharings these days.
  Suppose you have a big brother who is abroad. With the help of a messenger you and your family can see him through his webcam, talk to him through mic as if he is there in your room only. All these services are completely free.Yes this is the generation of messengers. Grab it or Lose it.

2.Popularity

You will normally want to go to a service where you can meet most people and chat with the ones who are like-minded. Though almost all the online messengers have the scope but not everyone can be equally popular. So in this regard, Yahoo messenger again surges ahead. With its widely distributed ROOMs (ranging from ’80s Rock to Regional to Football) they have a lot of traffic anytime. Be rest assured that you are not alone whenever you log into yahoo and to your desired room.

AOL and MSN come jointly second.

3. Privacy

If you are a person who is not too keen to let others know that you are on messenger, or don’t want to talk to strangers or very choosy about making online friends, then G-Talk is the one for you. With its no-nonsense minimum features, it does the job fairly well. No one will know about you because there is no provision in G- Talk to bump into an unknown person. Only someone who knows your mail- id and have your permission can chat with you. Otherwise you are as invisible as Osama Bin Laden.

All the messengers have these options too. But they are to be customized and even after a lot of effort, they have loopholes. So, if you wanna talk private, go G-Talk’s way.

4. Online Security

This is a thing of concern for almost all the messenger services. With its widespread and mostly direct accesses to pc-to-pc chatting, you may have some real vulnerable points through your messenger. If you haven’t heard of online messenger booters, Denial of service, source-quench method and etc. then let me ask for forgiveness. To talk about them here is a herculean task. Please go through articles with these names and you will have an overview.

Those who know about them, already understand the significance. And so, customizing your messengers appropriately to prevent them from disturbing your system is the recommended task. Do that.

G-Talk doesn’t have such kinds of problems because it never gives a direct access like PC-to-PC. You chat via them and they know well how to protect themselves. You can always trust Google on doing a no nonnse task very efficiently and here too they haven’t failed.

If you still want to use popular messengers and make friends, then other Yahoo chat applications like, YahElite, YAM can come very handy in place of a bug-prone and very easily attackable Yahoo Messenger.

The Winner

So, here you see, there is no such obvious winner. Still, Yahoo Messenger runs well ahead of others if you are an extrovert and isn’t that concerned with privacy like Bill Clinton. And if you want a no nonsense, straight chat program then I will suggest go for G-Talk. Practically it has so less features that you may feel like as if you are using an official version of an entertainment package. Sorry for those who love AIM, Rediff Bol, MSN messengers. But I really felt these two distinctly different messengers are the ones to choose with respect to your needs.

More Surprises

• What if you want to have an account in all the messengers and then chat together to reach out to MOST people in the world? Running 3-4 chat programs isn’t a solution at all. It will slow your system down, lessen your work speed, haphazardly flood your desktop with their respective applications. So to get you out of that trouble let me give you an address where all the families live under one roof. Yes you guessed it right, a multi-messenger.

Go and download Trillian if you want the best multi-messenger to enhance your chat experience with multiple online messengers inside one software only.

• What if someone doesn’t want to download any software at all and still want to chat in all these messengers? You will say its an irrelevant ask. I will say, let me make him happy too. With the likes of e-buddy, meebo you can chat online without having any software. Isn’t it kewl?

As I gradually wrap things up here, I feel I have atleast been able to give you an overview on the latest messengers. Still I believe there is THAT scope of an all-in-all online messenger. Let’s hope for the best . Cul8r!