Google Talk

In general I’ve never been a huge fan of instant messaging.  It doesn’t convey emotion well, meanings aren’t always understood, and it’s a waste of time.  You inevitably end up spending much more time “talking” than if you had actually placed a phone call.  You can have more verbal communication in 10 seconds that you could instant messaging in 2 minutes.

That said, I’ve kept an AIM account for years, several actually.  A while back I stopped using AIM in favor of Google Talk.  This lasted a long time.  Within the last year I started utilizing both again mainly to be accessible to some people not using Google Talk.

I still don’t utilize instant messaging much at all, except at work and that is a completely different product with only work contacts.  With the prevalence of cell phones, texting is more the norm now.

I’ve elected to keep Google Talk for only those contacts that utilize Google Talk.  AIM will be my normal one, but in reality, texting is most likely to be used now.  But what I really want is simple phone call instead.

Next up: Google Voice