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Portfolio > Genre Fluency 2
What is Instant Messenger? | Experience | Advice
An instant messenger is a client that allows people to communicate through text over a network, such as the Internet. Instant messenger functions in realtime, much like a telephone conversation except in text. Usually both users can see the lines of text as they are typed and entered using the messenger client.
Most instant messenger clients also include a "presents awareness"
feature, allowing the users to see if contacts are online at any given moment.
Many messenger clients allow the ability to display an "away messege,"
a note for other contacts and users letting them know the user is away and not
available. 
Some of the most popular instant messenger clients include: AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, and ICQ. Each of these messenger clients have their own protocol making these different clients incompatible except when using a client such as Trillian, Gaim, which have the ability to run the different client applications simultaneously using multiple protocols.
Instant messenger clients offer a host of useful features for its users. Many of the messenger clients now offer web conferencing, two or more users can use webcams, microphone and text in realtime to communicate over a network. Other features include buddy list of contacts, the ability to have multiple user names, the ability to link user buddy list for multiple user names (this is a specific feature to AIM). Many clients also offer the user to appear "invisible," appearing to be offline.Most of the messenger clients also provide the user to include a profile that can be made seachable by other users, and where the user can post relevant information about themselves, interesting web links, and other information they wish to share.
I have used a number of instant messenger clients. I have used, AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ and Trillian. I currently use AIM, MSN and Yahoo! messengers although AIM is my favorite as it is the most popular and most used of the clients. I use AIM primarily for realtime text communication and use Yahoo! and MSN messenger for their more reliable webcam and microphone capacities.
I use instant messenger primarily to keep in contact with close friends and relatives but have used it to communicate with people I have met in other web genres such as forums and weblogs. It is important to be aware of who you are talking to and the amount and degree of information that you give to people you meet online. For safety reasons it is best to not give out personal information and location until you know the person you are communicating with is save.
To communicate successfully with instant messenger clients it is important to be familiar with the clients features and functions. I would suggest trying out a number of different clients to see which ones best suite your needs. Also when chatting in realtime make use of the emoticons provided by the client to help you communicate not only information but also emotions and feelings.