Instant

Messages
 What is instant messaging
Instant messaging is an exchange of messages via software platform in real time
Th messages can come in the form of text, Audio or even video.

Popular instant messaging apps

What's app, Messenger, Facebook, Skype, Telegram, Discord

 Instant messages history
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,
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.
Thank you!