[JDEV] Thoughts on AOL

[Al Sutton]

I think you'll find what we have with IM is what happened with Email a
long time ago (well, long time in computing speak).

It used to be the case that you had;

- UUCP
- Various BBS systems (with their own Email systems Fido, 
- X400
- SMTP

All of which needed bridging products to send mail between the systems.

As IM matures as a system I think you'll find people converge on one
standard and bridge to their internal IM solutions internally, as
opposed to what we have at the moment.

In in the case of Email SMTP was the protocol people converged on, lets
hope it's jabber with IM.

Al.

On Wed, 2002-01-09 at 01:06, Aaron McBride wrote:
> 
> Here's something that's been bugging me for a while.  Why can't IM be like 
> email?
> Why can't I log into Yahoo and send a message to someone on AIM (without 
> having to get an AIM account)?
> Why can't I setup a server at my office that checks which of my "buddies" 
> are online, and let me know?
> 
> Is it really about resources?  If so, why doesn't AOL block email from the 
> outside world?
> Is it really about "protecting their users from spam"?  If so, why don't 
> they do something about all of the spam on ICQ?
> 
> Seriously... I'm baffled.  Maybe it all comes down to ad revenue.  If AOL, 
> or MS, or Yahoo, or whoever own the standard, then they can ensure that 
> they have their millions people looking at the ads that they sell.  Can we 
> somehow create a situation where the protocol is standardized, but there is 
> still a way for the people interested in making money to provide a client 
> that is better enough that people will use it with ads?  I'm thinking of 
> the Eudora model with email.
> 
> I'll shut-up now.  :)
> 
> -Aaron
> 
> 
> >It's just that they have this crappy double standard about how people are 
> >allowed to use the resources that they already offer up to the non-paying 
> >public, and it seems that a lot of people here (myself included) are 
> >wondering if we should respect *that* at all.
> >
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