Instant Messaging: When History and Technological Development Coincide
Written March 29, 2005

Instant messaging is a technology that is less than ten years old but nonetheless has made significant inroads in changing the ways in which young North Americans communicate and socialize. Initially designed as a freeware project with the purpose of increasing connectivity between Internet users, instant messaging (IM) has grown to become a popular phenomenon amongst teens and college students and a productivity-enhancing tool for corporate communications. Recent studies conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project claim that more than 40% of American adults are experienced IM’ers (Shiu 3).

Beyond the growing saturation of IM use lies the notable characteristics of the technology itself – as a communications tool and as the formation of a distinct cultural space. One of the most prominent advances that instant messaging offers is the ability to carry multiple simultaneous conversations with different users, effectively maintaining expanding social networks of friends, peers and acquaintances. This communication naturally carries a specific set of conventions and mores: the intricate politics of ignoring and acknowledging others, and the ways in which users define themselves and construct their social identity in this virtual meeting-place. As virtuosity continues to invade the everyday routines of a steadily increasing number of people, understanding the nuances of the technology which facilitates this connectivity will likewise become a growing priority.

As a primarily social and publicly driven technology, instant messaging is best explored through the framework of Ian Barbour’s notion of development as contextual interaction – a complex interrelation of technology, science and society. Barbour defines the contextualist view of technology as “those who see technology as an ambiguous instrument of social power” (Barbour 21). This premise is exceedingly evident in instant messaging: originally developed as a social tool, instant messaging has since become the property of large media corporations and has easily made the transition from independently developed freeware to corporate apparatus. The same technology which was borne of perceived social needs has become overbearingly scientific and efficient in a business context – conversation logs are monitored, ‘non-essential’ features are stripped and instant messaging loses much of its subculture status. However, it is interesting to note that many of the keynote aspects of the technology survive the divide: fondly regarded as a procrastination tool by college students, IM was declared a distraction and invitation to gossip in the workplace by a sizeable number (32%) of survey respondents (Shiu 17). Instant messaging contains within itself a significant technological identity, forged in its invention, and yet its role shifts as it moves from the public domain into the private sector – a prime example of IM as a technology of ambiguity and contextual interaction development.

Instant messaging was first developed in 1996 by four Israeli programmers who noticed that the Internet provided connectivity to millions of people, but not necessarily interconnectivity. They formed a company named Mirabilis and their public software offering was named ICQ (I-Seek-You). Within six months, nearly one million users were registered with the free program. The software’s strength lay in its ability to manage a great number of interpersonal connections across the Internet in a time where the World Wide Web was very much pervaded with a sense of detachment. Suddenly users could instantly and easily communicate with others online – bypassing the ambiguous uncertainty of chat rooms for a series of genuine connections anchored by solidified identities and known friends.

This technology was most certainly planned and executed with intent. However, the birth of instant messaging corresponded with sweeping initiatives for open-source software projects and unrestricted freedom across the Internet. The motivation behind ICQ’s inception was very likely based around a perceived need for a public communication tool and the ability and willingness to create it for the burgeoning online community. Initial and continued free access to instant messaging systems for the public seems to support this notion. Anyone with a computer and Internet access worldwide can participate in instant messaging. The technology itself is not overwhelmingly complex – many college-level programming courses challenge students to code their own peer-to-peer (P2P) networking software – but its immediate application to a purely socially beneficial cause is nonetheless notable.

In fact, if we can accept Langdon Winner’s suggestion in “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” that technology is often “strongly, perhaps unavoidably, linked to particular institutionalized patterns of power and authority” (Winner 164), then the conditions surrounding instant messaging’s conception become even more intriguing. If a technology is engineered to meet a particular perceived need and created solely for the uninhibited use of the general public, does it then carry implications of an empowered populace? Is this a manifestation of the popularly decried “power to the people”? The Internet provides the unique workspace and distribution opportunities needed for independent developers to turn the benefits of technology away from private profiteers and back towards the masses – perhaps instant messaging is the result of contextual interaction which sidesteps the litany of corporate concerns that overlap and heavily shape the vast majority of modern developing technologies.

However, as all successful ventures tend to do, the instant messaging phenomenon quickly attracted corporate attention. By 1998, giants like AOL and Yahoo! had launched their own instant messaging services, to be shortly followed by Microsoft’s MSN. Mirabilis – the company that started it all – was snapped up by America Online and began a slow decline into obscurity following the acquisition. The field was levelled to three major players who still stand today: MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). All three networks are incompatible, resulting in highly fragmented groups across North America . Typically a social grouping will adopt a particular ‘brand’ – for example, all of my friends use MSN – but some users are required to balance multiple networks to maintain all of their contacts. Selection of any particular instant messenger is largely arbitrary, although each program has developed specific features as it develops. For example, MSN boasts superior privacy management with its ‘blocking’ feature for undesirable contacts, and AIM is the only messenger which links the general web populace to the millions of AOL users across North America . Each subsequent iteration of IM software typically adds something to the core messaging service, from news tickers to image profiles to an increased range of emoticons (icons used to express emotion in the absence of, or supplementing, language). All three major services currently place small advertisements on the software’s contact list, generally solicited from one of the conglomerate’s own ranks.

It is interesting to note that the continued development of instant messaging under the sizeable corporate umbrella goes in two directions: one is centred on the user’s experience (enhanced contact list management, addition of images to personal profiles and so forth) and the other is centred on the advancement of the conglomerate’s own agenda (advertising, integration of specifically selected news services into the software, ‘trial’ games which lead to paid subscription, etc.). This would appear to be an example of instant messaging technology bending to its forced use as an extension of large-scale corporate blanketing, while simultaneously retaining the core motivations and intended usage constructed by IM’s initial conception. Instant messaging is maintaining its roots – free access and a focus on utilizing the Internet’s potential for public connectivity – while visibly twisting to serve the power agendas of the structures which currently control IM’s development. The technology remains true both to the social conditions which spawned it, and to the privatized development which Winner identifies as a specific, deliberate influence on the world it exists in. It’s a curious hybrid of technological development which can only be attributed to the contextual vein of explanation.

Furthermore, the general public still has a hand in the advancement of instant messaging technology. Freely available software such as Trillian and Jabber effectively bridge the gaps between each major IM service, allowing users to consolidate each of their networks into a single application. These programs typically ‘strip’ each IM service of its advertising and bells & whistles, returning the technology to its initial, core purpose: connectivity. The fact that such alternatives exist alongside proprietary software is a testament of sorts to the technology’s malleability, and perhaps to its origins in the freely progressive wilds of the Internet development community. IM has displayed a rather strong adherence to its roots, even while corporate interests bend the technology to their own ends. Once again, this hybridity demonstrates a tendency towards Barbour’s contextual, as the technology shifts comfortably back and forth between the public sphere that birthed it and the corporate interests which seek to capitalize on its strengths and popularity. The relationship between social and technological is clear, but where does science fit in?

The answer lies in private co-option. Instant messaging has recently exploded as a tool for internal corporate communications, touted as saving valuable time when employees need to ask questions or discuss brief issues. As the trend swept across the business world, many IT managers were faced with the task of incorporating messaging clients into everyday work. Initial experiments met with security breaches and, above all, employee procrastination. Surveys were conducted and engineers were consulted. Proprietary software was licensed and repackaged for professional use, stripped of many of the features that public versions contained. Policies were drafted and redrafted and finalized concerning IM use: brevity, professionalism and productivity were heavily emphasized. The calculated science of management had met instant messaging.

Under these circumstances, IM is no longer the implement of free connectivity that it started as. Conversational capacity is limited by policies backed by survey and keystroke data, and users are generally blocked from using the service to communicate outside of a predefined range of business-related contacts. Science and specific social circumstance have combined to shape this manifestation of IM technology, rendering it drastically different from the free-range and corporate-controlled iterations of the past. While it is important to note that this management-shaped version of instant messaging exists alongside the others, it is also relevant to point out that the core technology still operates: scientific management simply isolates the elements of IM which lend themselves particularly well to office productivity – such as the informality of quick conversation and simultaneous conversational ability – and axes the rest. IM’s efficiency-oriented development in the corporate world is simply another example of the importance of context when considering comparative development.

Instant messaging, with its varying uses since conception, is a good technology to examine for the purpose of addressing development from a contextual perspective. As corporate control wove its way into IM’s history, a fundamental split occurred between the technology’s public service origin and the power agendas of its new owners. A further divide was introduced when instant messaging was co-opted for office use and its development heavily influenced by scientific statistics and management techniques. Intriguingly enough, all three versions of instant messaging exist alongside one another, each displaying the comparative features of the institutional ideologies which constructed them. By placing the history of IM into the framework of Barbour’s contextualism, the varying influences on the technology’s development are revealed and we see that context is an integral part of understanding why technology advances the way it does.

But questions remain. How is it that instant messaging’s conception – freeware designed to fit a specific social need – prevails despite the heavy corporate influences that now control IM? Do the circumstances of a technology’s initial induction into society somehow remain impressed into the technology’s very identity, surfacing again and again, regardless of the ideologies which shape future development? If so, we should see renewed vigour from the realm of free, open-source programming in the future… but these are questions won’t be answered for a while. IM is still less than ten years old, after all. It still has many places left to go.

Works Cited

Barbour, Ian. “Views of Technology” in Ethics in an Age of Technology. Pp. 3-15. Harper-Collins, 1993.

Shiu, Eulynn, and Amanda Lenhart. How Americans Use Internet Messaging. Washington , DC : Pew Internet & American Life Project, August 31, 2004 .

Winner, Langdon. “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” in Technology and the Future. Ed. Albert H. Teich, Pp. 150-167. St. Martin ’s Press, 2000.