I’ve long been a fan of AOL Instant Messenger over it’s Yahoo!, Microsoft, and more recently, Google, counterparts. Most non-techie users have a preference for an IM network based on one factor only: it’s what most of their friends use. The feature sets of most IM products are comparable, and though the user interfaces have different advantages and disadvantages, none are so bad as to make users reject them en masse. Even a lack of feature’s can be overcome through third-party plug-ins. I use “middle_man”:http://www.mymiddleman.com/ for AIM, and before that, DeadAIM. But as broadband internet has become more widely available, and thus usage of extra bandwidth-consuming programs like instant messaging tools has become more prevalent, the chances of all members of an individual’s social circle all using the same IM network has greatly declined.
On modern PCs, it’s trivial to run two IM programs at once, even three. But for people who don’t want to manage contacts over multiple networks, 3rd parties have been developing clients that connect to multiple networks and allow easy contact management through one unified “buddy list”. It occured to me today that clients connecting to multiple IM networks are especially useful for mobile devices, which don’t have the memory or even the visual space to allow for running multiple IM clients.
Trillian is one of the most popular multi-IM clients, and they recently announced a version of their client, Trillian Astra, made specifically for one of the hottest mobile devices yet: “Trillian for the iPhone”:http://blog.ceruleanstudios.com/?p=162. Their key selling feature is that “Trillian Astra is designed for iPhone; it doesn’t just “happen to work” with it”. This is a smart move by Cerulean Studios, the makers of Trillian, and could be the start of a trend if they develop the Trillian client to work on other mobile devices.
Just as mobile devices themselves are a convergence of utilities, the most valuable applications on them will be the ones that allow users to accomplish the most with the least effort and use of resources.