I'M taking control of IM

IM (Instant Messaging) took over my life. I began on this quest back in 2000, when I was working for a company that had recently come to depend on Instant Messaging for corporate communications between people in different locations and different continents. I had friends on every IM service available at the time: AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, ICQ. In addition, I was deploying Lotus' Instant Messaging product, SameTime, to the corporate environment. I have tried these steps to gain better control over my IM usage.

Client Overload
Every IM service would like to be your one and only Instant Messaging service. People choose an IM client for various reasons, such as the notification that they have a new message on their favorite web mail service or because they have friends already on that service. This is great, except that as your circle of friends expands, you will not want to change from the IM client you like nor them from theirs, so you add another client to chat with them and another for other friends. Pretty soon, you are running four or more IM clients. With them all open so you can see who is online and who is not, they take up half of your screen space.

Combine IM Clients
One step to get a handle on the IM Client Overload is to get a multi-protocol client. There are several available for different operating systems or you might choose a more universal client. Adium is available for the Mac, and there is Miranda and Trillian for Windows. Pidgin (formerly GAIM) is open source and available for all major operating systems, including Linux, Windows, & Mac. Also, there is an online option for people who may work from various computers or on public computers - Meebo is an online service where you can input your IM account information and it provides you a web-browser interface that combines multiple IM services into one window. Using one of these options can help regain control over the multiple IM clients taking over your screen and hard drive.

Consolidate Buddies
In an attempt to gain control of my IM life and dealing with the problems associated with multi-protocol clients, I have started severely limiting the time I am on most services, so that I only use 2 or 3 reliably.The big IM services would still like to be your only IM service, so occasionally, they will make upgrades or changes to their services that cause the multi-protocol clients to be unable to connect to the service until more changes are made in the client software. This can be a hassle if you start to depend on IM for work and collaboration on top of friendly chatting. A way to alleviate this problem is to get your buddies/family/coworkers onto a single IM service. This can be a daunting task, but by limiting your availability on most services, people who want to chat with you will consider moving or adding another account to be able to see you.

Cimplify your IM life
Yes, I know that it should be Simplify, but the theme of the C's was too appealing.
Since most of us actually have work to do and the web is a tool many of us find indispensable in getting our work done, chatting the day away on IM does not get a lot accomplished. Now it is time to Combine these tips and use IM to your advantage.

Here is how I'M taking control of IM:
Limit myself to 2 active IM services: GoogleTalk and Skype (both have IM and Voice functions) and get an account on Meebo, enter my IM account information for all my other services into it and use it only when I want to chat with someone on one of the other services.