Instant Messaging Programs

Whilst there are many IM programs available, four of them (America Online's Instant Messenger (AIM), Microsoft's MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and ICQ) take up the majority of the market share. Of these, MSN Messenger is the most popular in the UK and worldwide, whilst AIM makes up 56% of the IM market in the United States.

In this section, we take a look at each of these programs in more detail, along with Trillian - a client that connects to all four systems.