Comments on: Interesting idea: Tagging contacts in your instant messenger?

By: koobs13

koobs13 — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 01:49:21 +0000

naaaaa………… why do people gotta be so dang professional on the internet

By: Gary King

Gary King — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:09:36 +0000

Paul, my feeling about Kevin’s IM startup is that it will not be suitable for a broad audience; Digg is not suitable for a broad audience, it’s for a tech audience.

The IM platform is a very hard game to play in; Jabber tried to create an open network a while ago, and still haven’t completely succeeded yet. (Groan)

By: Paul Butler

Paul Butler — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:05:59 +0000

IM as a platform definitely needs to happen. I have heard that Kevin Rose is doing an IM startup, I wonder if it will be open given how important openness has become for digg.

By: Michael Petrov

Michael Petrov — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:27:33 +0000

I completely agree with this idea. Another twist to it:
- blocking whole user groups by a tag
- expand that into time sensitive blocking and you can separate life and work IMs much better throughout the day

By: Gary King

Gary King — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 06:01:55 +0000

Peter, yeah, in this day and age, what with all the huge announcements made by companies (I’m thinking specifically Facebook’s Platform), that it would be fitting for IM networks to start opening up. That wouldn’t be as surprising since we’re more accustomed to such massive news these days (YouTube buyout, etc.)

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 04:23:38 +0000

Tagging would be helpful, at least for me, since I’m obsessed with organization. Contacts often fall into more than one category, so tagging is the natural alternative.

As mentioned before, WLM already has the “type to find a contact” feature, and it can be pretty useful if you have a large contact list.

I guess the only thing I can think of would be for the IM providers to make their platforms more open, like you’ve said, Gary. It would be nice to have the ability to have Facebook profiles linked off or otherwise integrated into your contact list.

By: David

David — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 03:39:16 +0000

Messenger already has the search feature, but for display names only.

By: Gary King

Gary King — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 02:23:33 +0000

I’d love to see Skype open up their platform so apps can be developed that use the network. It’s so annoying right now – it’s way too closed, and yet it’s so popular.

By: Jonathan Snook

Jonathan Snook — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 02:13:49 +0000

Tagging wouldn’t offer much for me, I don’t think. The big things I’d like to see are:

* search. I want to start typing in a name and see only the contacts that match that name; possibly allow secondary matching against nick, email, or other contact info I may have captured.
* possibly tie the contact info into Outlook.
* a better sense of location. What timezone are they in? Can I click a button and see their location on Google Maps?

Unfortunately, there’s barely been anything of interest to me in IM clients in years. There needs to be enterprise-level IM clients. I’d be willing to pay for this.