So I see all these ads all over the net for MSN, or YIM, or AIM, or even this other one called ToonIM and I am wondering. What does it do for the person or the company that creates these mesengers? They are free so they aren't getting any montary gain from the customer. They don't have adds on their messengers do they? So what is the point of everyone having a differeint instant messenging system?

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well, i suppose it's 'bragging rights' for the more established companies like msn and yahoo, etc. they can easily corner more customers to stay with their service "exclusively" by offering as many features as they can, with instant messaging as one of them. from their business view point, they would think that a customer using their brand of IM would stick with their brand of other services like portals/search engines/directories, etc. and it is there where they can rake in some revenues.

other smaller companies who offer IM services, i believe, would just like to battle it out with the GIANTS. like the classic david and goliath story, where size didn't matter for a small person (or company) to "slay" a big one.

but who knows, maybe this time there are no ads, but in the near future, they could insert ads if they see it fit. they have the power anyway over their systems, and users would just have to deal with them if they are already drawn to their IM systems. nevertheless, if they do place ads in their IMs soon, people would soon get used to it, and eventually ignore them altogether (like we are used to ignore clicking some pesky banner ads, like "punch the monkey" ads, etc. ).

 

 

 

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Hi all,
The "big" boys (eg. Yahoo, AOL etc.) give them away for free because they can
a) create more "brand name" recognition... which indirectly leads to more sales etc.
create just one more gateway portal that ( as servph said above) that eventually they can link some paying service to.
c) "ego" wars.
Just some thots..
RGPHNX

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I think ICQ and MSN have already some links into both clients that points you to comercial places. Having a messenger for example for MSN is a clear way of keeping users using their products. E.g. Hotmail. Most of the people would not use Hotmail if they did not have the MSN messenger. The small companies i really do not know how do they get founds. Like a lot of services and sites in Internet. I guess Goverments, universities...

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I use msn messenger. I like it and all, except from the ads it places, and also the tabs on the side of the msn main window, but that was easily fixed by using a patch. I think to gain the popularity they should make a watered down version of msn messenger, but different from windows messenger that comes with windows xp. These ads, emoticons, etc.. tend to get annoying after a while, its a major drain on system resources. The small compaines that are offering instant messenging service, it is going to be a battle with the big companies some day.

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Well msn does have ads at the bottom and tabs at the side that link to sites like e-bay and lavalife. It also links to their other services which they could make money off of. I think they also hope that after you download a free version that your going to like it then buy a paid version, although I don't think most people do. And they also have things like you need to sign up for hotmail to use msn, so they got you to use one of their services. That's my guess, but I could bw wrong.

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I think from my expirence is just just about security. some actually only work in intranets, on a secure system. the rest are really all the same.
http://www.round.trap17.com

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usually a company never releases only the messenger, except trillian heh, but trillian isnt quiet free, msn messenger is powered by microsoft, yahoo messenger by yahoo, aol messenger by aol, and so on. These are basicly for brand recognition.

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Let me just say... I LOVE Trillian! It's so irritating to download and run like 183759261 IM programs that take up three quarters of your processor speed. Gah.

I think IMs like ICQ MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger aren't exactly just for ego or brand recognition. They show ads, too.

Companies pay to have their ads shown on the IMs. ICQ, MSN and Yahoo! give away the IMs free because they're already paid for by the companies.

It's sort of like television. In a way. You get my point.

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The last time I checked, all the messengers have ads in one form or another. I think for many of these, there are programs out there that can "patch" to get rid of ads. My personal preference is "Gaim". It's an open-source multi-protocol/network multi-platform ad-free IM client.

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