Instant Messaging MS-End

MSN - Skype
This is the end of the long and bendy road of MSN Messenger. It is a shame to see the death of MSN as I myself once was a user, however Microsoft displayed nothing but common sense when they shut the MSN server down. A difference of 180 million users is a good enough reason to shut the live messenger down in favour of Skype regardless of if it angers many people.


http://www.nextpowerup.com/news/489/microsoft-shuts-down-msn-messenger-on-march-15.html

The users of MSN will not be able to sign into Messenger after March 15th 2013 giving them time to upgrade to Skype. When they migrate to Skype, all of their contacts will continue to work as before, and they will be able to use all the features Skype has. The president of Microsoft's Skype division Tony Bates said "We want to focus our efforts on making things simpler for users while continuing to improve the overall experience." MSN Messenger had a web-cam capable section to it where you could perform video calls and with transferring to Skype Microsoft has bettered its service.



http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/msn-com-down-including-hotmail/

Chat and Instant Messaging
Instant messaging has proved to be similar to email and the World Wide Web in that it's implementation for use as a form of business communication. It was driven primarily by individual employees using their own software at work, rather than it delivery by corporate IT departments. Tens of millions of the consumer IM accounts in use are being used for business purposes by employees of companies and other organisations. Instant messaging is a service where you can interact with others that you are speaking to in real time, this is much more private than a chat room as you are talking directly to the individual opposed to posting a comment that everyone can see as well as the person you are talking to. This stops people from seeing private conversations that you would like to have with an individual. Simple instant messaging services only allow a maximum of 2 people to chat with each other, otherwise more advanced services allow a group of people to chat, share images and files with each other. An example of this for now but will not be present in the future is MSN Messenger.
Instant messaging requires people to to be online to be able to speak to each other hence the fundamental part of it being in real time. The beauty about it being in real time but over a computer is it allows shy people to interact in a conversation in their own time and put their feelings and views in about it. However there is a downside to this real time instant messaging, one of them being that you cannot see the person you are talking to so as a result it means that the person could lie about their identity to cover up their real identity. This real identity could be a dangerous person like a paedophile which means it is easy for them to target a particular person. This identity cover up could cause these dangerous people to man make situations to encourage the individual to meet them. Also in the short time it takes to write a message it doesn't encourage long reflection which means an inevitable answer for the dangerous individual.



http://bgr.com/tag/skype/

Voice Over Internet Protocol
VOIP is very similar to instant messaging but instead of typing a conversation it is possible for a person to speak as they would on a telephone and have the option to stream a video. A lot of money can be saved on international phone calls if you use skype, this is because you are not charged to use the telephone service. However like IM the other person needs to be online for it to work because of the real time factor. VOIP can be used through both computers and smartphones, this means that you can do it at any time if the other person is online. To use it on the computer you will need a headset/speakers and a microphone to talk through, also if you want to stream a video between you both then you will require a web-cam. It is the same for a smartphone but you will need 3G Internet coverage. Last bust not least, if you are using a house phone then you will need to plug the phone into a router.
However there could be some potential drawbacks from using this usually free service, the main one being some of them do actually charge a monthly subscription to use their service. Another is that if you have a bad Internet connection then it can typically be slow to bring through the sound of the people speaking better known as Latency, this could cause frustration due to the possible misunderstanding of the person receiving. In relation to that if there is not an Internet connection due to the servers being down then it means no Internet calls can be made and equally if the VOIP server goes down then the same will happen.