So, for a long time the most popular instant-messaging service used among inflation fans has been Yahoo Messenger. It kind of arrived at its status by default as most of the members who have been around for a while have YIM accounts, and newer members tend to create accounts on YIM since it was the most used service by those they wanted to RP with, and so the cycle continues. I know quite a few do have accounts on other services, or don't do instant messaging at all, but YIM is still far and away the most popular among those who do want to use instant messaging.
However YIM does seem to be steadily going downhill, and is far from the most popular IM at large these days. They no longer keep their apps on the various smartphones updated, so those have largely stopped working. There are multi-platform clients, but aside from Trillian I've yet to find one that is any good (IM+ sucks big time). Also, with the way things are going, I wonder if we could soon see the end of YIM. We should really find an alternative or we could find ourselves unable to contact each other.
I'm not suggesting having an official inflation chat service, (nobody ever said 'right we're all going to use YIM') just that if enough of us have the same idea about which service to use, others will start to follow and we can have a new, default.
The following essential features come to mind.
- don't require the creation of a full account on social media (so Facebook is out)
- ideally can be used on multi-platform clients like Trillian (so Facebook again and Google Talk are out)
- isn't restricted to mobile-only apps (so Kik and Whatsapp are out)
- can save chat history, very important I think to most of us who RP.
- has some sense of a long-term future, so is well established and reasonably popular (so Yahoo, and probably AIM and ICQ are out, as are any number of 'next-big-thing' chat services.)
Personally I think this leaves the front-runner as Skype. No longer just a video client, though its popularity for video chat gives it a long term future I think... I can't see Microsoft discontinuing it any time soon. You can use it with Trillian, save chat history and it just requires the creation of a simple account.
Thoughts.