I was surfing around when I saw this blog entry that explains the current IM (Instant Messenger) Market Share and what the future holds.
But before I lead you there, a crash course on IMs.
First there was ICQ (I-seek-you) by Mirabilis, an Israel company that began what we now know as “messengers”. AOL or America OnLine jumped the trend and launched AIM or AOL IM, which was followed by Yahoo! Messenger or YM (still with me?), after that MSN Messenger showed up.
With all those top 4 IMs, came Trillian, a service that provides the end-users a way to talk to all IMs using one-desktop client. Then Odigo came out similar to Trillian but also offers their own IM Network. Then another one and another one and eventually Jabber rocked the world of IMs (well in the West).
The latest entry in the IM space is Google Talk or gTalk. And with the announcements of MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger of opening up their networks to each other (great!), sure makes the future more brighter for us end-users. Now if you are not following Google news, Google, Inc. recently finished its ‘pouring’ of money (ie buying shares) into AOL a Time Warner Company, and announcing that AIM/ICQ (ICQ was bought by AOL) to Google Talk. Imagine that!
Without further ado, for the statistics, visit this site.