Part 2 - History

The need for humans to communicate faster and more efficiently has been one of the driving forces behind the Internet. Not since the invention of the telephone has communications between humans been more readily available. The communication power of the Internet began to take shape in its infancy with one of the first Internet applications, email. While the Internet was still ARPANET and with only four links, the first email message was sent by Ray Tomlinson in 1971. The first message consisted of the text “Testing 1-2-3” and did not contain any of the features associated with modern email. Even with its humble beginnings, within twelve months of the first message most of the features associated with modern email had been incorporated [http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/ivh/chap3.htm].

One problem with email is that it only permits one to one communications. If a person needs to get his idea out to a large number of recipients then he has to use email lists. Even then, it is not guaranteed that everyone that wants access to the information can get it. This led to the next great communication medium for the Internet, Usenet. Usenet is a type of email list that is stored locally on servers. This allows users to access any group they want, read all the messages, all without having to be included in a mass email list. The first signs of Usenet appeared in the summer of 1979 when Tom Truscott and Tim Ellis presented the idea for Usenet at a meeting of Academic UNIX User Group. Within a short time period, the idea caught on and Usenet became one of the major foundations for the Internet.

Email and Usenet were the early predecessors for computer communication but a large hole still existed for real time communication or chat. IRC was one of the first to fill this void. Building on BBS style chat applications, Jarkko “WiZ” Oikarinem created Internet Relay Chat or IRC in the summer of 1988 [http://daniel.haxx.se/irchistory.html]. Based on a centralized server system, IRC users pick a username and password and then login to an IRC server. The IRC architecture provides real time chat in chat rooms as its primary feature. Additional features include PM or Private Message to a user, DCC file transfer to a user, and other UNIX style commands. IRC now consists of several major networks such as Undernet, Dalnet, and EFnet, all of which support tens of thousands of channels.

Starting in the mid 1990’s, several technologies started, mixed, joined, broke up, and fused to create the modern instant messaging experience. ICQ was the first instant messaging application on the market. ICQ which stands for “I seek you” was developed by Israeli company Mirobilis and released in November 1996. Shortly afterwards, America Online introduced another messaging client called AIM or American Online Instant Messenger [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICQ]. AOL had a similar messenger service for members only, which one AOL user could IM or instant message another AOL user. This service soon became so popular among AOL users that AOL expanded the service to non-AOL users. With such a popular technology evolving and a lot of money at stake, law suits began to emerge. A battle between AOL and ICQ broke out over the right to instant message. In December 2002, AOL Time Warner announced that ICQ had been issued a United States patent for instant messaging. In turn, the term “instant messenger” is a service mark for AOL Time Warner and can not be used by any other company or program [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging]. This all became a moot point because AOL Time Warner acquired ICQ in the summer of 1998 [http://company.icq.com/info/press_release26.html]. Along the way many other instant messenger type services have popped up. A sampling of a few more common messengers is Yahoo! Messenger, Microsoft’s .NET Messenger service and several open source attempts at making a universal messenger system [http://www.akamarketing.com/yahoo-feature1.html].

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This post has been edited by tansqrx: May 11 2006, 06:26 AM

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Email (sending) protocol
Yahoo! Messenger Protocol Tutorial - Part 2

A few emails that I tried to send have been returned to me. The reason given has something to do with pop3 or smtp. I found out that they are called protocols. But that's all I know. Time Warner handles internet, the telephone and cable tv.

-question by Bill Siemon