Although I have an account on most of the IM services, I’ve found myself being online less and less, and it doesn’t have such an important place in my mind. I’m not sure whether this is because many of my close friends have started using IRC, or because I’ve started to keep up with old friends more on Facebook, or because I’m keeping track of what aquaintences are up to using Twitter, but my use of Jabber and MSN is slowly decreasing, even though I have over 200-odd contacts. Having said this, I do find myself using Facebook Chat more and more often, even though I hate its guts. Why? Simply because various close friends and family members find it easier and simpler to use, and more accessible than any of the other technologies available at the moment. Don’t forget that we’re talking about (relatively) tech-illiterate folk here.

It might be due to Facebook Chat becoming more “mainstream” and easier to use. Or the fact that people don’t seem to equate their GMail account with IM functuality (i.e. GTalk). Or the amount of nonsense encountered on MSN. But as far as I can tell, the use of specialised IM technologies is decreasing on a regular basis, and the use of microblogging and social networking sites is increasing extremely quickly.

Many people are talking about the death of social networking sites such as Facebook due to microblogging technologies, however I refuse to believe that this is the case. But I do think that the use of IM technologies for communication between friends and family members is going down the drain. I cannot, however, speak for the use (or lack thereof) of IM technologies in the workplace – I know that within the sysadmin team(s) or programming team(s) in industries, IM is a great tool for communication, on the other hand, many companies are still using IRC and have private IRC servers for communcation within the workplace.