Instant Messaging

Instant messaging is a form of real-time text communication between two or more people over a network, distinguished from email by delivering messages immediately while both parties are online rather than storing them for later retrieval. Real-time text chat between computer users dates to systems such as the Unix talk program in the 1970s and the CompuServe CB Simulator launched in 1980, but the Israeli company Mirabilis brought instant messaging to a mass consumer audience with ICQ, released in November 1996, which introduced the now-familiar idea of a persistent buddy list showing which contacts were currently online. America Online followed in 1997 with AOL Instant Messenger, and the basic model ICQ established, a buddy list paired with real-time one-to-one chat, went on to shape decades of later messaging platforms.