Short version: Download Adium if you have a Mac or Digsby if you’re on a PC and enjoy Facebook chat, Gchat, AIM, and everything else from one place.
The plethora of communications tools available gives me a headache. I would simply ignore the options I don’t find value in, but in doing so I’m also ignoring all of the people using them. This is why so many Facebook-hating techies have had to break down and establish at least a basic presence on the site.
So until there’s a shakeout or one tool triumphs above the rest, I’ll do my best to be many places at once. Heck, I even had a MySpace page for a little while there. Fortunately, everyone I knew who was MySpace-only has migrated to Facebook. This allowed me to delete my profile there, which honestly gave me a sensation similar to a shower after a long day swimming in sewage. When Fast Company featured MySpace and their “lanky, shaggily hip CEO” as their cover story LAST MONTH it made me want to die and/or unsubscribe.
But back to my point, instant messaging (IM) platforms have flourished. It used to be so simple. Everyone in my high school was on AIM. We’d get excited about really lame profile hacks and accrue buddies and put way too much thought into away messages, foreshadowing Twitter by a decade. But now everyone with a job is on Gchat and Facebook has introduced a chat feature (although hardly anyone seems to use it). And there are still plenty of people using AIM.
Fortunately there are some programs that wil combine all of these for you in one fell swoop, freeing you from the maddening *BLINK* *BLINK* noises of Gchat or the 100 pixel cellblock that is the Facebook chat window. Download Adium if you have a Mac or Digsby if you’re on a PC and enjoy Facebook chat, Gchat, AIM, and everything else from one place.
This may remind you of Trillian, the original all-in-one IM client. They were fighting the good fight against closed IM platforms way back in 2000, but the only friends I’ve ever had on MSN or Yahoo IM are people I met in Europe, and I don’t really need to IM with them.
