He had earlier built an instant-messaging client called Gaim, which has become popular among the open-source crowd.
CD-quality sound on the company's instant-messaging service could provoke even steamier gossip around the coffee pot.
Recently it has been working to integrate Facebook, Twitter and instant-messaging applications into its services.
By offering instant-messaging capabilities, Google only catches up with rivals at AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo.
All manner of personal correspondence, including transcripts of intimate instant-messaging exchanges, can be unearthed by search engines.
Viewers can import their instant-messaging buddy lists and chat online with friends while watching the same programme.
However, the popular instant-messaging service Blackberry Messenger - known colloquially as BBM - is absent from the upgrade.
Tencent is a wildly popular and successful Chinese firm with a huge social network, instant-messaging and online gaming.
An instant-messaging-like program, Hello lets you simply and conveniently shares high-resolution originals if you check the proper checkbox.
ENGADGET: Switched On: High-resolution photos want to be free
On July 20 Microsoft began offering Net2Phone calls to 18 million instant-messaging customers.
Founded in 1998, Tencent first gained an online presence with an instant-messaging platform.
The office seemed almost eerily quiet and untroubled, a room full of stylish people wearing headphones and instant-messaging one another.
Replacing the familiar iChat, Messages is an instant-messaging program with group-chat capability and a dash of text messaging mixed in.
Facebook on Wednesday also introduced a change to its instant-messaging service, which now allows people to create on-the-fly group conversations.
According to ComScore Media Metrix, in July, AOL's instant-messaging service had over 41 million users in the U.S. alone, Yahoo!
She also likes its instant-messaging feature, known as BBM, as well as its calendar, which syncs with her work PC.
WSJ: Double Mobile-Phone Users Like iPhone for Image, BlackBerry for Email
Developers at FaceTime Communications in Foster City, California, are out to carve a different niche in the corporate instant-messaging market.
Acquired by AOL two years ago, ICQ now has 70 million users, making it the largest instant-messaging service in the world.
U.K. operator 3 has sold hundreds of thousands of so-called Skype phones, which have built-in support for Skype's voice and instant-messaging software.
From our point of view, Internet security is a fundamental service that every user must have, just like searching, e-mailing, instant-messaging, etc.
FORBES: Short-Sellers Are Wrong Because Qihoo 360 Is Different
He is quick to add, however, that other Microsoft services using Passport could do so, including MSN, Hotmail and the instant-messaging service.
Besides, he adds, with so many competing instant-messaging protocols now in use, it would be fruitless to attempt to unify all the rival networks.
The first might be simultaneously instant-messaging, listening to music and e-mailing, the other puffing a Gitane and jotting down notes about being and nothingness.
But increasingly unreliable connections to Google in recent months have hindered downloads and sharply reduced the effectiveness of instant-messaging service Google Chat, he said.
And finally, there was the U.K. government's reaction to the riots last summer in which social networks and instant-messaging services were blamed for spreading dissent.
According to a survey performed by Jupiter Research, a whopping 71% of consumers between the age of 13 and 17 use instant-messaging programs on their computers.
One of the first to benefit is expected to be Lotus Sametime, an instant-messaging add-on for firms that already license Lotus Notes and its related networking software.
She was instant-messaging her parents back home for more money, and detailing the conversation for her friend, loud enough so that everyone in the coffeehouse could hear.
Ultimately, FaceTime enhances rather than displaces the dominant instant-messaging software.
But Lotus's entrenched position does not worry Leo Schlinkert, boss of Communicator Inc in White Plains, New York, which focuses almost exclusively on providing 128-bit encrypted instant-messaging services for financial institutions.
应用推荐