Henry Hagnäs

Since most Instant Messaging clients, like Adium on Mac OS X, support several protocols you don't have to "move on" to something better, you instead just add another protocol when necessary. Since my ICQ-account was getting mostly just spam contact-requests I looked into disabling it. Looking through my contact-list I realized that all the contacts I have in ICQ have been added 8-10 years ago! Most of my contacts no longer use ICQ and it was kind of sad to look through the list of old friends I might not ever talk to anymore - either because I don't really know them anymore or don't know how to contact them. That's the way things go I guess. 

Still, going back to the tree-ring analogy in the title, it's interesting how i've added a new IM-protocol about every 2-3 years, first it was ICQ, then AIM, MSN, Skype, GTalk and now Facebook Chat. Usually the latest IM-protocol is the one that gets the most new users added and Facebook Chat certainly added the most new friends in one fell swoop. Of course that's because it consolidates years and years of old friends and non-geeks into the same system. Facebook certainly tries to be the end-all of social communication but I wonder if we don't get another IM-protocol in a few years time again. Wonder what that will be?