But the catch with alternative instant messaging services is that each one is a closed system.
These include restrictions over how much time is spent on instant messaging services.
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The Messages app also supports traditional instant messaging services, including AIM, Yahoo!
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Twitter, a social-networking blog site, allows users to send status updates, or "tweets, " from cell phones, instant messaging services and Facebook in less than 140 characters.
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Tech-savvy travelers are also taking matters into their own hands and using social media tools such as blogs, location-based technologies, and instant messaging services to respond to emergencies.
One operator, EE, has predicted that its customers alone will use more than 226 terabytes - 236, 978, 176 megabytes - of mobile data as they took to Twitter and instant messaging services.
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MessageVine develops own-brand instant messaging services for mobile phone operators that enable them to build a community of desktop and mobile messaging users, according to the company's Vice President of International Operations, Amit Rahav.
Although AOL is prepared to open up its Instant Messenger servers to GSM network operators, it remains steadfastly opposed to the idea of doing so for users of other instant messaging services -- although these services are not taking AOL's resistance lying down.
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.
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.
One promising route forward could see Google integrate Java into its existing email, instant messaging and telephony services.
According to Research in Motion , the e-mail service has returned to BlackBerrys but delays to its BBM instant messaging and browsing services will continue until further notice.
The key to establishing an effective relationship with potential buyers is quick and even instant access to mobile messaging services embedded directly within apps.
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Recently it has been working to integrate Facebook, Twitter and instant-messaging applications into its services.
It also provides other services, instant messaging and e-mail, personal home pages, games, shopping and even a little news, with the aim of becoming members' home base in cyberspace.
According to Tencent, whose services include instant messaging service QQ, microblogging site Tencent Weibo - which is similar to Twitter - and online games, WeChat has close to 300 million users.
While AOL offers its services and instant messaging to several mobile carriers and PDA platforms, it's only company-led foray into wireless Internet is through its Mobile Communicator product: a Research in Motion (nasdaq: RIMM - news - people ) Blackberry, running on Cingular Wireless ' network, that has e-mail and instant messenger.
It also said that e-mail and instant messaging would prove popular when phones could handle these services.
They point to future services that integrate mobile messaging, instant messaging, email and voice, all in one, that can be accessed from any device.
Taobao sells no goods, but supplies the services that make it easier for others to trade: payment, instant messaging and even logistics.
Or it could be integrated into Google's e-mail and instant messaging applications, giving users a bridge between their phones and Google's online services.
It also offered a private messaging facility which it said was "much more private and secure than email or instant messenger services".
He is quick to add, however, that other Microsoft services using Passport could do so, including MSN, Hotmail and the instant-messaging service.
With instant messaging gaining in popularity, companies would like to find a way to initiate casual conversations about their products and services within the IM chat boxes.
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