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, but it wasn't long before Mirablis, a a company founded by four Israeli programmers, introduced ICQ, a free instant-messaging utility that anyone could use. ICQ (which was shorthand for "I seek you") used a client, which is a real-time tool that uses a software application that resides on a computer. ICQ was aquired by AOL in 1998, and is now a part of AOL's suite of online services.
Instant Messaging, or IM for short, is a way of communicating via typing on a PC, wireless phone, or other Internet appliance or device. …
