The instant message is indeed the revolution of the communication. It let us chat online anytime we could use the internet. However, there are some problem with it. I think most of the cohort in the class could easily find that, everyone uses different IM system. Half of them use MSN, and the other half use Gmail. Although I think that AOL is not so popular as before, there are still some people use it.

Why IM is not as seamless as e-mail? I think the most reason is e-mail could communicate with different client, but IM can't. If the IM systems cannot be integrated, it is hard to make the interoperability perfect. With the view of the adoption, IM was just developed no more than ten years and is still growing. There is its own advantages in different IM system, and this proves that most functions of the IM need to be refined now.

Surely, IM is not completed nowadays, but it still shows its powerful technology that helps to communicate. To compare IM with e-mail, they both have their owns features and don't conflict with each other. So IM could be developed without affected by e-mail, even one day they would be combined (like Gmail?), and I will look forward the better communicating way.