Wireless IM Catching On
There is new evidence that wireless messaging is taking off in the US. AOL reports that it has 500,000 unique users for the wireless version of AOL Instant Messenger. When it launched the service last November it started with 500. In most cases the company gets a share of any revenues generated from wireless IM, the wired version is purely ad supported. It will be interesting to see how IM and SMS will coexist in the future. The advantage of SMS is that it's a global standard and practically anyone with a mobile phone can send and receive messages now. But IM is very popular in the US and has the added feature of presense information. It makes sense for US carriers to license AOL IM right now because it helps them sell messaging services. But in the future, if SMS is updated to include presense, why pay AOL?
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