racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

Listened to Episode 9 of Diggnation on my train ride home yesterday evening, and among the first topic to be discussed was Google Talk.  Apparently, show hosts Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose

weren’t too fond of having yet another IM client and the fact that this

“beta release” still has much to improve on in terms of functionality.

I like the straightforward interface, but I do agree that Google

should have made its GTalk client compatible with other IM standards

(much like GAIM). 

I’m even having problems logging in using other Jabber clients, like

iChat.  Or maybe that’s just the firewall at work.

At any rate, the true judge of this instant messaging client and

network’s worth is the user base.  And as it goes with instant

messengers, it’s usually the early adopters that dictate what would be

the IM of choice.  After all, messaging is a social

activity.  And people would definitely go for the network where

all (or most, at least) their friends are.

But anything related with Google gets so much buzz these days that

GTalk might just end up as the dominant IM client, as much as GMail has

taken over the global email space.

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