IP: Instant Messaging...

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> From: Andre Durand <adurand () jabber com>
> To: "'Galler, Bruce (Bruce)'" <bgaller () avaya com>,
>    "'farber () linc cis upenn edu'" <farber () linc cis upenn edu>
> Subject: Instant Messaging...
> Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 09:50:27 -0600
> X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21)
>
> Hi Dave,
>
> Bruce Galler and I know of each other through some dealings we had recently
> related to a company that I've started in cooperation with some of the execs
> of a small public company here in Denver. This new company is called
> Jabber.com, and it is a commercialization of an open-source instant
> messaging platform.
>
> I first became involved in instant messaging back in 1991 in the bulletin
> board industry. Instant messaging did not appear in the BBS industry until
> the first multi-line BBS's were created in 1988. At the time, this feature
> was called Paging and it in essence allowed users to see who else was online
> and send them a short text message that would appear before their command
> line when the message was sent. Several BBS's incorporated this feature,
> including Galacticomm, PC Board, Mustang Wildcat etc.
>
> To my knowledge, AOL's buddy list was the first major bulletin board to
> implement IM features into the AOL client software and my company, Durand
> Communications created the first client/server IM feature in our MindWire
> product for NT in 1993.
>
> Prior to the implementations of IM in the BBS industry, the Unix community
> has had several flavors of IM like 'paging' going back to the early to mid
> 80s.
>
> IM as a separate application did not originate until 1995, when Miribilis,
> an Israeli company created ICQ. AOL followed shortly after with their AIM
> product (basically splitting out their buddy list feature into a separate
> Internet client) in 1996. Since then, there has been an explosion of new IM
> clients and platforms. None of them distributed and none of them talking to
> one another.
>
> That's where Jabber comes in, it is a distributed client/server platform
> (similar to email) which bridges all of the proprietary networks. You can
> find out more about it at jabber.org (developers info), jabber.com
> (commercial products) and jabbercentral.com (end-user news and info).
>
> Hope this was helpful. If you have other questions, don't hesitate to call
> or write.
>
>
> Andre Durand
> GM, Jabber.com
>
>
> PS. How you doing Bruce? Let's make sure to stay in touch.