Comments on: Open Thread: How Do You Chat?

By: RoyK

RoyK — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:29:04 +0000

Digsby + Messenger (since Digsby’s Right-to-left support isn’t satisfactory, and most of my chatting is done on Messenger, right to left).
Digsby = 3 email accounts, twitter, facebook, ICQ, AIM, Facebook chat and GTalk.

By: Tim

Tim — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:02:45 +0000

GTalk, Skype, and Twitter.

By: Brandon J. Mendelson

Brandon J. Mendelson — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:26:33 +0000

Twitter. Everything else just seems useless.

And about video blogs: Let’s face it, not all of us are able / willing / or capable to converse through video, so I don’t ever see that taking off. Some people, myself included, are not photogenic and prefer the written word.

By: Colin

Colin — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:26:19 +0000

I use the GTalk client primarily to chat/call my business partners while at a computer. Skype for conference/meetings with fellow webworkers.

What I can’t figure out is why Google hasn’t transfered any of these new features from Web-Gtalk to the Gtalk client… it’s really getting annoying.. that I *still* can’t group chat in the Gtalk client.

By: Steve Boese

Steve Boese — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:34:53 +0000

Meebo primarily, Twitter and once in a while Yammer as well.

By: James

James — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:21:39 +0000

I use Digsby as I have contacts all over the place, msn, aim, ichat, gtalk, and more recently facebook – people like slacking I guess, and more people use facebook than any other im clients!

By: Benny

Benny — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:48:42 +0000

Most of my friends, family and contacts use MSN, so thats my 1st choice but I will use skype or google if asked.

By: Ali

Ali — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 20:39:36 +0000

I use Meebo.com and Windows Live Messenger(MSN). On rare occasion I will use Ventrillo.

90% of my contacts are on the MSN IM network, so I have that choice made for me.

I use Meebo at work to access MSN because of firewall issues.

By: Alan Bollinger

Alan Bollinger — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 20:31:20 +0000

Personally I roll with pidgin (http://www.pidgin.im). It allows me to use ALL IM services seamlessly. Only other client I use is Skype, but if Pidgin supported it I would dump it too. I use chat primarily with clients who are already on IM as I find that people not already setup rarely get it – or use it.

By: Pete Johnson

Pete Johnson — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:34:43 +0000

Oooh, good question. You could ask the same thing about social networking sites as many of them have chat as part of them.

I choose two and a half. Well, to be more accurate, one is chosen for me at work but that choice prohibits me from interacting with anybody who doesn’t work for HP.

I’ve also become addicted to Twitter, but synched with Facebook status (hence the half) and find that I get more replies there that start conversations than I do natively on Twitter. For loose connections, I really like that model as it lets everybody participate on their terms as active or inactive as they’d like and responding when it’s convenient for them.

There are lots of other choices than that, but I don’t seem to have a critical mass of people I’m interested in interacting with anywhere else. I think that’s the key, your group of friends and co-workers end up making a chat choice for you based on where they collectively decide to plant themselves.

—Pete

Pete Johnson
Hewlett-Packard Company
Marketing and Internet Platform Services IT
Portals and Applications Chief Architect
Personal Blog: http://nerdguru.net