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.