Use Messengers for IMing, e-mail for e-mailing and scrapbooks for scrapping.. Thank you!

Any idea why MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk are called instant messaging software?

Well, I think (and so should you) they are called so because of the purpose they serve -- the title being more than self-explanatory -- they are used for "instantaneous" messaging.

A conversation is like public speaking with a limited number of audience members. The members of a conversation are generally *involved* in it i.e. there's always someone talking. You can't have a conversation with your mouth shut, can you? It's the same thing with an instant messaging conversation. You don't answer someone after an hour. Rather, you answer instantly. But to answer, you need to be "involved" -- you need to have your IM client running showing your availability to take part in a conversation. So, IM = one-on-one conversation. Let’s term this kind of conversation an “actively participated conversation”.

Contrast this to e-mail. E-mail is like snail mail. You don't have to be online to receive e-mail. Similarly, you don't need to be at your post-box to receive snail mail. You don't need to be actively involved in any conversation -- you can reply as in when you check your mailbox; you don't need to wait at your mailbox for someone to send you an e-mail and reply to it immediately. So, e-mail = snail mail. And let’s term this kind of conversation a “passively participated conversation”.

Right... SO?!

Well, Orkut has this concept of online scrapbooks... a concept that I think is rather misunderstood. A scrapbook is meant to be a place for a “passively participated conversation”. This is not a very widely shared view though; there are some people who scrap in anticipation of a response (the level of anticipation being proportional to the number of times (s)he hits the refresh button). You want to converse actively? Use an instant messenger.

End T-ran(t)-smission. Thank you.