In the beginning AOL , ICQ (I SEEK YOU), and CompuServe offered a service called instant messaging. Instant messages are an online conversations between two or more people. Instant messages are private and free. It's a whole new way of communicating that's fast, simple and totally addictive.
Now there are many other instant messaging services including:
- Yahoo! Messenger
- MSN Messenger Service
- Netscape
- Google, Excite, IBM and Apple also have similar systems
The basic idea is that you download a program that runs on the background on your machine. Then when someone wants to contact you, a window pops up on your machine with the message. If you're not online or the program is not running, you'll get the message, next time you sign on.