Instant Messaging on Fast Track Today's chats could spark a multimedia information revolution by Mike Snider

USA TODAY

August 11, 1999

©COPYRIGHT 1999USA TODAY , a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

The messages from America Online to Microsoft have been curt and consistent: Stay out of our instant-messaging system . Microsoft's nearly instantaneous responses: Open your system to everyone .

The exchanges have been making headlines across the country.

Now here's a message from the Internet engineers and other developers who are designing the future of instant messaging (IM): If disputes can be set aside and systems designed to work together, what today is a basic text-chat system could become a revolutionary form of communication tomorrow.

With today's IM, people are alerted when friends and co-workers log on, and they can initiate real-time typed conversations if both parties agree.

In the future, people will be able to send "smart" instant messages that find the recipients immediately, whether they're at work, carrying a wireless phone or hand-held PC, or at home watching TV. Such messages may be real-time video, voice or text.

Relevant information arrives instantly. A broker and customer could chat when it's time to sell. Retailers and fans could chat when a music release from a favorite artist hits the store. A concerned parent driving home from work might get instant medical information from a blood pressure monitor or an electronic thermometer.

The futuristic applications of instant messages are "basically only limited by your imagination," says John Harrison, co-founder of Ecutel, an Alexandria, Va., firm that specializes in secure mobile communications networks.

While AOL and MSN joust for control of today's instant messaging systems, engineers and developers are designing the messaging features of the future. The result is expected to be a network that is constantly aware of users' status and their presence on line.

Next-generation "Buddy Lists" could reach TV set-top boxes, hand-held PCs, cell phones and home phones. A seamless network would take messages -- a cell phone call, a Webcam chat, a typed message, a picture or a fax -- and format it for the devices being used that time.

Instant messaging today involves "my buddy on the other side" of the connection, says Dave Marvit, co-chairman of the Internet Engineering Task Force group on the Instant Messaging & Presence Protocol.

His take on the future: "Say Mother has a heart-rate monitor. I could check on" her by "an instant message-type technology."

Tomorrow is near

Some information products suggest this instant messaging future. Users of Yahoo! Messenger (messenger.yahoo.com) are notified when mail arrives, when stocks hit certain prices and whether their bid was tops in a Yahoo! auction. Friends and contacts with the software can tell when the others are on line; text or voice chats can involve 10 people.

PeopleLink of Santa Monica, Calif., has created enhanced instant messaging software that lets strangers with similar interests communicate individually or in groups, instantly or through e-mail. An icon (a porch light that's on) on message boards and in chat rooms signifies that a person is available for instant messaging; an envelope icon means they are not on line but can receive e-mail.

Instant messages "give you the presence of somebody. You know if somebody is on line, and that's pretty important," says Steve Glenn, founder of PeopleLink, which has an on-line community (www.peoplelink .com) and has created systems for such partners as iVillage.

"We've taken the concept that it's not just your friends or colleagues you want to know are on line. This allows people who have shared interests -- that they are fly-fishermen or single mothers, or they have Crohn's disease -- to pretty effectively connect and communicate."

In general, he says, "you get a 'stickier' experience," meaning people stay at a Web site longer.

Glenn believes that such connectivity will spread beyond the PC. "I assume America Online, ICQ (a Web-based IM program; www.icq.com), Microsoft and all those guys will integrate with Palm Pilots, your phone and car radio, and basically every place that people have communications."

Web-based "virtual assistant" programs such as General Magic's Portico (www.generalmagic.com) instantly track down users, usually by cell phone, when an urgent phone call, e-mail, voice mail or fax comes through. Competitor Wildfire (www .wildfire.com) is courting cellular carriers to deliver its fax and e-mail services.

Instant messages between the Net and cell phones are due this year from Seattle-based Tegic Communications (www.tegic.com). Users can see on their phone or on the Web whether their contacts are available. Users can type messages using the phone keypad; Tegic's software learns your vocabulary and guesses the words.

"What we're trying to achieve here is extending instant messaging to a device that is really an important part of people's mobile culture. So when you're away from your desktop, you're still connected to your friends," says Tegic's Bill Valenti.

Looking ahead

Some current Internet protocols allow Net data to reach people as they "roam," just as cell phone calls are routed to mobile users. Ecutel is using a mobile Internet protocol and other standards to build "middleware" that will route various forms of communication to roaming colleagues, regardless of location or network.

"Spontaneous Internet communications are not only going to occur between people but also network appliances, such as security alarms, VCRs, smoke detectors, health care monitors and nursery surveillance," Harrison says. Before founding Ecutel (www.ecutel.com), he and co-founder Dzung Tran developed a system that, beginning in 1993, linked NATO intelligence personnel during the war in Bosnia.

In another real-world example, drug enforcement investigators in Mississippi are testing Ecutel's system to share data such as maps and motor vehicle, land and police records among officers in the field and databases in neighboring states. Users can access databases remotely, as if they were on a local network. Instant messages can be sent between officers, independent of their connection, and they can decide whether to accept them.

"We want people to get messages wherever they are, no matter what network they are on, and for it to be secure," Harrison says.

An eventual killer application will be video instant messages, says Vijay Saraswat, the other co-chairman of the Internet task force messaging group (www.ietf.org).

Jupiter Communications analyst David Card predicts a humbler hit: instant messaging on TV sets through cable modems. "We can be at home creating our own VH1 pop-up videos while we're talking to friends."

Beyond today's battle

AOL and Microsoft remain in a standoff on compatibility in current systems. This may be just a sign of things to come as both industry giants figure instant messaging into their business plans.

"We see it expanding to devices in the coming years -- wireless devices or any Net-ready device. Every one of them will include some form of instant messaging or presence indication," says AOL's David Gang, who adds that company engineers have consulted with the Internet task force. "We see it migrating quickly to having quick one-on-one conversations from any device, from anywhere in the world. A traveling Buddy List is going to turn the Earth into a very, very small planet."

Similarly, Microsoft plans to provide instant messaging wherever you want to go today, tomorrow or further in the future, perhaps on its WebTV devices, Windows CE-driven Palm PCs and Auto PCs. "There is a lot of cool potential," says MSN marketing director Rob Bennett. "The mission is to enable people to get information at any time, anywhere, on any device. People are just starting to see the beginning of what is going to come."

The current features are a blessing for some. For the hearing-impaired, IM is much easier and cheaper than slow teletypewriter (TTY) phones, says Beth Keller, 31, of Rye Beach, N.H. "Instant messaging is faster, and it saves time. I used to have to use long-distance calls to friends, and my bills skyrocketed."

Within three years, 175 million people may be using instant messaging on PCs and other devices, according to Mobile Insights, a professional services firm in Mountain View, Calif. "It is going to expand into a mainstream communication vehicle," Mobile Insights analyst David Hayden says. "Some of the options you'll see will be mind-boggling."

For the revolution to happen, companies must use the same Net protocols. Those working on the protocols hope that all parties will see the value of inter-operability.

"If you get more people on the network that can talk to more people, everybody wins," Marvit says.

"The vision is really of people being on line together, doing things together, working, playing and having fun. This sort of presence, this sort of instant messaging leads to a new way for people to live," Saraswat says. "To get to that vision, the Internet form of inter-operability has to be available."

AOL gets finicky about its 'buddies'

Instant messages allow communication that is faster than e-mail but more personal than a chat room. In a small computer window, users can exchange messages almost instantaneously while operating other programs.

AOL's Buddy Lists, added in 1996, tell users when their pals are on line. A free Internet version of the software, called AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), was released later, letting Net users create Buddy Lists and exchange messages with AOL members and other AIM users.

Today, AOL estimates that nearly 41 million people send 430 million messages daily. A separate on-line community, ICQ, which AOL bought in June 1998, has 40 million members sending about 330 million messages. Teens, especially, are frequent IMers; 30% of those ages 12 to 17 have 20 to 50 people in their Buddy Lists, AOL says.

Last month, several programs, including Microsoft's MSN Messenger, Prodigy Instant Messaging and Yahoo! Messenger, added access to AOL's messaging systems, something AOL blocked. Microsoft has repeatedly tweaked its software to evade AOL's countermeasures.

America Online calls Microsoft's tactics an invasion of privacy; last week AOL announced agreements with Internet service providers Earthlink, Juno and MindSpring to create co-branded versions of its instant messaging product.