Bebo IM has gone, I repeat the IM has gone! Yeah, well according to an article from Mashable.com no one cared at all that Bebo’s instant messaging had indeed gone, the instant messaging service which was introduced to Bebo users back in August 2008,
yes August of this year! And yet after just under a month the Bebo
community has turned against the IM client, forcing it to be removed.
Well,
I have to say it’s very much power to the people, personally I cannot
stand having IM linked in with my social networking, the other two main
competitors in the social networking market Facebook and Myspace both have their own IM clients which are simply lame.
Of
course what all social network IM clients have lacked in my opinion is
substance, not enough features to stand out above the rest, they are
very simple IM clients which I believe are capable of so much more,
they give people nothing more then the ability to instantly message
someone on their friends list which isn’t all that new!
The way
I see this movement of social network IM’s is that these companies
simply want you to stay on your profile as long as possible, talking to
friends whilst also talking about photos, games and applications all
whilst being nestled in the hub page of the social network! It’s a
cunning trap to keep you coming back there, especially if the user is
unaware of other IM solutions such as Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo
Messenger and AIM and they believe that Facebook IM or Myspace IM is
the only way to communicate to people.
In the positive light it
can be seen that conversation is being moved to the Web rather then
being in the desktop, but I believe what is going to be necessary is
for a “Multi user IM client” to be designed for the Web in order for
users to collect their Facebook and Myspace IM’s into a website, which
could be dynamically developed into an embedable widget to create new
communities based around the profile of the user thus bringing traffic
back to Facebook and Myspace and creating a wider user base!
I
can’t get an accurate gauge on how people use the IM’s but it has
continuously frustrated me seeing social networks trying to become
social hubs for conversation, this conversation in my opinion should
only go as far as commenting and writing on people’s Facebook walls!
What do you reckon?
Article Republished from: http://joshchandlerblog.blogspot.com/
Image Source: http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=7686848695
