MSN Messenger is king of all IMs?

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I’m long past teen/college age so I can’t say what might be happening at some levels, but I doubt your mobile blog sources as to the US ‘catching up’ … SMS is still totally unknown to many mobile phone users and a distinct novelty to those few who know what it is. It (SMS) may become big with the younger set, but it will be beyond my lifetime if not before yours when it is ever used by professionals as it is in the Philippines.

Some years ago we visited my in-laws in Bulacan and my wife wanted to ask her mom’s doctor something about mom’s health .. without a second thought she texted the doc and the doc responded in a few minutes with an answer. In the US you don’t even talk to a doctor on voice … and for the doc to touch a keypad to deal with a mere ‘lay person’ … not very likely.

It’s a culture think far more than a technical issue .. although with the outlandish prices for texting in US it makes no sense.

Some good comments here, glad some others have found Trillian … makes the ‘who is better’ arguement moot. Like Migs I was 100% an ICQ guy, in it’s early days it was very good, before it became so hopelessly loaded with ‘features’, but when I took a government job they blocked it .. how crass, expecing me to work instead of message. ;-) So I jumped to YM! because the Y! programmers were more clever (sneaky) than ICQ’s.

You’ll never see the use of SMS in the US as you do in the Philippines (or in Japan!), becuase US carriers discouraged it in early days and now price SMS messages way more expensive than voice minutes, on some plans a single SMS message costs as much as voice 100 minutes, so many users never even bother with it

It’s hard for me to believe that such a high percentage re reporting using MSN Messenegr. MSN is reminicient of Micrpsoft a few years ago when Will Bill was trying to ignore the Internt. The most critical ‘miss’ in MSN hits and missues’ is that it only works when the intended redipient is on line. This is especially trying when attempting to coordinate with folks in the US and the Philippines at the same time. If your contact is off line, MSN comes back to you and says, “do you wnat to send an email”? we’ll D’oh, if I wnated to seand an email I would have done so. With YM! (by far the smartest of the bunch),. your message goes into your contacts inbox to be answered when he she next come son line .. in an hour or in a week .. try it, you’ll like it.
YM! also has excellent PC to PC voice, great for meetups when ur tired of typing/texting. For those in business or heavily into IM, I highly recommend http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/
This is a totally free client that works with all the IM’s at the same time, so no need to argue about ‘the best’ and no need to miss friends on different services.

In Internet Cafes, I always notice most people using YM. In offices, it’s indeed MSN. I got Messenger Live Beta and it got more features than YM, but all of my contacts are in Y!.

Perhaps it’s about the features?

YM choice is culture- and geo-based. Your choice of IM would be what you’re friends are using. And somehow, Yahoo was the first portal/service to become dominant here in the country. That’s why it’s difficult to just introduce a new IM client (i.e. Gtalk) and expect it to rise in popularity soon–unless it supports multiple protocols/services (i.e. Trillian, Gaim, and even Meebo).