Diggin Digsby

Instant messaging has been around forever, or at least since the 70's when you could IM on your green screen. We used to only be able to IM with others using the same IM client but those lame restrictions were dropped and these companies have opened up and allowed us to chat across company lines for quite a while now.

You could be instant messaging and not even know it! Even if you are not using instant messaging through a traditional client like AIM (AOL Instant Messaging), Yahoo or Gmail, you may be chatting or instant messaging with friends on Facebook or MySpace. Plus, with real-time communication on Twitter and FriendFeed - which are technically micro-blogging, but really could be considered a form of instant messaging ... you could be out there IMing all over the place.

Over the past few years, I have tried out a few different clients for managing ALL of my IM accounts in one place. My latest IM client crush is Digsby. I can manage all of my accounts - Yahoo, Gmail, Facebook, FriendFeed and Twitter in one lovely little Digsby window that I keep anchored on my desktop.

Digsby just put a new release out today that has made the service (per Digsby) - 50% faster. Sounds good to me. Here is how I use Digsby ...

I have three IM clients (Yahoo, Gmail and Facebook), plus three email addresses (Digsby alerts me of new emails) and three of my social networking profiles (Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter) filtering into Digsby. Adding Facebook allows you to see FB status updates, plus friends that are online at any given time.

Because I am a grouper - I filter my IM pals down into custom groups (family, pals, work, etc) so I can quickly see who is online if I have a burning question or some other message that I need to share at that moment. Another new feature added today, Ctrl+F pulls up the Buddy List Search in a handy shortcut.

Most of my IM's are text to text, but I can pop a photo in chat window and send it over or chat with my webcam. The file transfers in Digsby are fairly quick and painless for the most part.

I've read that emails are dying a slow death, soon to be replaced by all of our real-time communication. For me, this is already happening on a large scale. Remember, you can save your chat logs if you need to remember something - they are super easy to search and filter by date and user.

I know, I know, you don't want to hear that email is on the way out. I will break you in on this one slowly. Promise!