Effusia Blog

I’ve not used the official AIM client in many years so I haven’t kept up with all its latest features and bloat. The last time I used it, the ads, extra annoying graphics, animations and sounds were just too much of a distraction to make it useful for real and serious communication. This week I spotted that they have included yet another feature that is also more annoying than useful: real-time IM.

“Real-time” meaning as you type ‘a’ they see an ‘a’. I don’t see this feature adding any value unless you are looking to get yourself in trouble. I wouldn’t want to count how many times I have typed things I never intended to send in a heated discussion or how many zillion words I have misspelled until the built in spell checking caught it for me. Everyone would see how terrible of a speller I really am. (Yes, many already know, but I like to keep it as secret as I can.) Having that little bit of a buffer there is the only room you have to proof read an already quick, stream of thought communication medium. How frustrating is it going to be on the recipients end too watching you type, delete, type, type, delete, type, delete, type?

I do see the value in knowing that the other person is typing though. A typing indicator is a feature that has been in many IM clients, Effusia included, for as long as I can remember. It is good to know the person on the other end of your conversation is paying attention to you and still in the conversation but real-time IM is just more bloat. Leave it to public IM clients who cater to teenagers to just keep adding more useless features like this.