iChat Sounds Professional, AIM Not So Much
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In my job, we have hundreds of customers that are tech savvy and are nearly all heavy computer users. During business hours, we make ourselves available via iChat and we prefer the customers contact us that way. Most of them do and it works great.
Also, our company is stretched from Canada to Texas to Pakistan so iChat is the best way to keep up with each other.
The reason I like iChat is because I can talk with multiple customers and potentional customers at once. Also, if they have a question and I need to remind myself of the answer, I can do a quick look-up with nearly no delay in the conversation. It’s also a conenient way to send and receive files.
Even though the list of “buddies” gets long and sometimes the chats are numerous, Chax and improving typing skills makes it a great tool to use for business. In fact, iChat is an absolutely essential business tool for me.
So, why does it feel so strange to ask someone for their “AIM buddy name.” To me, “AIM” and “buddy” just has a juvenile connotation to it. It is even worse when their answer is something like, “babyroxx97.” It just feels so strange. It’s the way I use to flirt with girls in high school.
I’m hoping that some of you can help my change my view and see iChat as a big-boy tool. What are your first thoughts when you hear “instant messaging” and “buddy lists.” Does anyone else use iChat for business? Does it increase your productivity? If you don’t use it for work, how often are you chatting for fun? Do you feel that your Mac “buddies” are more prone to use instant messaging than your PC “buddies?”
April 9th, 2007 at 7:43 am
No definately PC users use IM a lot. I mean, everybody uses MSN (or now “Live”) Messenger. That is also the problem I have with iChat. Nowadays nobody uses AIM. There is ICQ and MSN. For the geekier people there also is Jabber. But nobody uses AIM or Yahoo! OK, .mac users have a .mac/AIM account, but I just know 1 (!) guy with .mac.
iChat is… worthless for me. It can’t even handle multiple accounts (I mean 2 AIM accounts for example, not an AIM and a Jabber account. That it can handle.)!
April 9th, 2007 at 11:03 am
I bought a new iMac on the strength of the advertising of iChat and it’s features. I soon found, however, that the video was not as good as I needed it to be and made it is a complicated proposition to put to new customers who are not tech savvy. The audio/video is far more important that the text and it was gust not reliable or smooth enough. Mac users are thin on the ground and iChat is incidental to the transaction and customers cannot be doing with tweeking the picture, like a 1960s TV set. I am now testing iVisit, which is cross platform and peer to peer. It eats bandwidth but so far it seems more reliable (if I can get my ISP to perform). If Apple makes a cross platform, peer to peer version of iChat, i’ll ditch iVisit.
Krgds Rups
April 9th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
You also have to think of the quality of your camera! The internal iSight is not tooooooo good…
April 9th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
I think for business purposes more people are using services like Skype instead of iChat/AIM, Yahoo or MSN. Skype is cross-platform, supports VOIP, Audio and Video chat and also has a “buddy-list” IM function. Now the only thing that truly costs money with Skype is the VOIP features…everything else is free and included in the package. Plus “What’s your Skype ID” sounds more professional than “What’s your AIM name?”
Now what could make Skype cooler is if they licensed the various IM protocols from AIM, Yahoo and MSN and allowed users to intergrate those buddy lists into Skype’s main list so that people could just use one app instead of having to use two different ones (Adium and Skype for example). Adium is a great application, but until they get Video conferencing added in, it’s stilla tough one to call.
April 10th, 2007 at 5:44 am
I don’t use IM at work, but wish I could. I use it occasionally at home, and when I do, I use Adium. It supports multiple accounts, of any type, Bonjour, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, gTalk, Jabber.
I do think that IM tends to have this youngster rap to it. Terms like buddies, and Friend lists don’t help. Contact lists are more mature, and give less of an unprofessional image to the outside world. The problem with usernames is that you’ll get a lot of John Smith’s so how to you split them up? sometimes you need to use a number.
I think if IM was more adopted in companies, the email rate could be really reduced. Its a big issue with so many people, (a GTD nightmare). Even services like Twitter can help, if you need to broadcast a short message to lots of people, you can do it through that.
Soo many companies rely on email as a primary source of information distrubution, when there are many other alternatives, and better ways to do things (forums, electronic notice boards, etc). Personally I don’t need an email about every fund mananger (I work at a life and pensions company), but I want pensons ones, but they all use one mailing list. Why can’t I even choose what I subscribe too? Selective emails, or bulletin boards would save me so much email space.
Overall, I like the Google approach to everything. I like the gmail, the calendar, the docs and spreadsheets, the chat. Its a great all in one package and I think companies could embrace that and really reduce costs. No mail servers needed, access from anywhere, easy to share documents, book calendar meetings, email and chat right there. And you can always build them into desktop apps (iCal, Mail, Adium, etc).
April 10th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
I agree that “Cantacts” is more mature than “Buddy”. I have felt the same way as the author and I would definitely like to see a change in iChat to “Contact List” rather than the juvenile “Buddy List”. I still use iChat for my Mac friends but also keep Adium running at the same time for the rest of the MSN/ICQ using world. I continue to use it because iChat works better for file transfers and video than any other client, but with the caveat that it only works well with other Macs. Adium on the other hand only works well as an IM client, frequently balks at file transfers, and has trouble displaying the correct availability status on all my machines.
April 17th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
I personally don’t use iChat. I use Skype and Aduim. Adium is an IM program, and is designed more around social stuff, but it’s easy to use, and I can use all of my programs at once, to save RAM and processor space.
April 19th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
I have to second (or third or fourth or… whatever!) all those above, and suggest the lot of you switch to Adium. iChat just isn’t very good, Adium is really the best chat application out there for ANY medium or ANY platform.