I Love IM - NOT!

I'm starting to develop a serious dislike for Instant Messenging. Don't get me wrong, it can be a useful tool to keep in touch with people, or at least it is if they use the same protocol as you.

For example, if you sign up with an MSN account you can't communicate with people using Google Messenging, AOL won't talk to Jabber, Jabber can hardly talk to Jabber, never mind anyone else and so on.

This means that you end up needing multiple messenging accounts (and in some cases multiple clients) in order to do one job.

It really is a shame that Google, Microsoft et al are so distrustful of each other that something that really does need to be cross platform and cross protocol ends up just making people cross.