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Flip Open That Cellphone - It's IM on the Move |
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By Heather Clancy
The New York Times, October 7, 2004 |
IT'S the latest in instant gratification.
Like many other first-year law students at the University of Miami, Ashley Powell relies on instant messaging to reach her friends when they're hiding out at places like the library. But unlike most of her IM buddies, Ms. Powell, 22, is just as likely to send a message from her cellphone - a Motorola i830 - as she is from a PC, especially because unlimited instant messages are part of her Nextel service plan.
"I wanted everything on the phone," she said. "I wanted to be able to use IM when I was out."
Although it grew up on desktop PC's, instant-messaging software has gone mobile. The software, which lets you send short text messages to a list of designated contacts, works virtually in real time, and increasingly it lets you see who is online and available for a chat no matter what they are using to log into the service.
It looks more and more as if IM has outgrown its exclamatory roots in teenage chatter. The Washington-based Pew Internet and American Life Project estimated in early September that 53 million adults use the technology. And even though most of Ms. Powell's tuition-conscious friends at school can't or won't cover the extra cellphone service costs for mobile messaging, many other people are apparently willing to pay.
The Pew survey revealed that 15 percent of IM users have sent messages on a cellphone, hand-held or wireless notebook computer, and suggested that the more frequently a person used IM, the more likely he or she was to have used it while on the go. Among those 18 to 27 years old, 25 percent reported having used IM wirelessly.
It's that young audience that AT&T Wireless is eager to capture with the Ogo, a $100 device that includes special navigation keys for messaging and carries unlimited IM service and e-mail from the three big IM providers, AOL, MSN and Yahoo.
Lauren Mathy, a 13-year-old from Chicago who has been using the Ogo for about four weeks after receiving a test version, said the gadget was easy for her to learn and let her stay in touch with friends "anywhere, anytime." Although she doesn't use it in class because of a school policy restricting such devices, she carries the Ogo pretty much everywhere else.
"Even when I'm in the house now, I find it easier to go on the Ogo rather than go on the computer," she said.
At the other end of the spectrum, mobile IM is finding a role in business.
Philip de Souza, the 42-year-old president of Aurora Enterprises, a technology consulting firm in Torrance, Calif., started using mobile IM technology early this year on his Treo 600, a combination cellphone and data communications device made by PalmOne. His company has used IM for more than five years to communicate internally and with important customers. Now, Mr. de Souza switches on his mobile IM connection any time he is away from his office for more than an hour. Earlier that morning, he said during a recent telephone interview (itself arranged through an IM introduction), he had used IM to discreetly check on something for a customer during a sales call by sending a message to a colleague in his office.
"I use it more as an advantage, as an ace up my sleeve; I don't wave a flag," Mr. de Souza said. "It helps to move things forward. I would never use it if I was meeting with a person one-on-one."
Don't expect to send a manifesto: As with the BlackBerry device beloved by e-mail addicts, mobile IM typically means brief missives pecked out on teeny thumb keyboards or selections from canned messages.
"Certainly, these exchanges tend to be driven by a short list of questions," said Scott Opitz, the 44-year-old president and chief executive of Logic Explorers, a software company in Philadelphia with 40 employees in St. Petersburg, Russia. "It's a great way to stay in touch with people you would have a hard time to stay in touch with. You can look online and tell whether they're there. And you can give them the option to ignore you."
Mr. Opitz has mandated that his staff members use instant messaging, mainly so they can cheat time differences between the two offices. More often than not, he said, he does his messaging while traveling using a Dell Axim palmtop.
An America Online survey of more than 4,500 United States residents also underscored mobility. Of the 2,672 respondents who were IM users, 19 percent said they now sent instant messages while they were away from a desktop computer, compared with 10 percent last year. Again, IM use on a mobile device was more common among the young.
"In particular, IM seems to be moving onto cellphones," said Amanda Lenhart, a research specialist for Pew Internet. "Our sense was that text messaging and IM was beginning to blur."
The cost of sending instant messages depends on your cellular service plan. Some carriers, like AT&T Wireless, Nextel and T-Mobile, offer a monthly Internet connection fee that covers IM traffic, while others charge a fee, usually around 10 cents, for each outgoing message.
Himesh Bhise, general manager of AOL Mobile, said that by the end of 2005 more than 70 percent of cellphones would include software that can be used with the AOL Instant Messenger service.
By this time next year, Mr. Bhise said, he expects a dramatic increase in mobile IM users. "I would be disappointed if we weren't doubling the number," he said.
Of course, AOL isn't the only game in town. The Ogo uses a software interface from IXI Mobile of Redwood City, Calif. The back-end technology that actually delivers the instant messages is from a Montreal-based start-up company, Oz Communications. Oz also has a deal with T-Mobile.
Various IM clients are available for download off the Internet. Mr. de Souza, for example, uses a $14.95 program called Mundu Interoperable Messenger (wireless.mundu .com), which works on devices that run the Palm operating system. Mundu actually bridges IM services, allowing messages to be sent through AIM, MSN, Yahoo and ICQ and effectively creating an IM community with global reach.
But increasingly, mobile IM will become just another standard feature.
Amy Bacon, a 31-year-old marketing professional who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, chose her latest cellphone, a Nokia Edge model, based on its user-friendly IM features. Virtually all of Ms. Bacon's work contacts and many of her friends turn to IM first when they want to contact her.
Having a phone that provides her with a choice of how to respond is crucial. Recalling a cross-country trip last month, Ms. Bacon said an IM greeting arrived from a friend she hadn't spoken to for several weeks. This time, however, Ms. Bacon decided to give her thumbs a rest.
"I started to respond in IM on my phone, and then decided to call," she said. |
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