One of the main advantages that presence services can bring to users is the ability to set a “status message” in order to give more information about your availability or not availability. It’s certainly the simplest usage and surely more information can be offered, such as context-related information (i.e. connected to calendar information and so on).
I have a very simple wish list that only Iotum Talk-Now for Blackberry was offering but that’s not gone mainstream yet and it’s limited to Blackberry only. I use multiple IM networks and some clients, like iChat (that I currently use), let me define the same status message for all networks as well as set different statuses for each network. But It’s not enough.
That said, here is my very simple wish-list:
- I want the ability to choose different statuses and status messages for groups of contacts
- I want the ability to have a “status” on Facebook also, linked to my IM status, showing the same message
I don’t think I’m asking too much. It’s a shame that I cannot do that already in clients like GTalk or iChat, for example (the first, at least), or in most popular IM networks. I have groups, why I cannot set “Available” for my co-workers and “Not Available” for the rest of the world? Or “Available, but working” for my family and “Available” for my co-workers and “Not available” for friends?
We have been speaking of “presence” for years now, but easy features like the first one are still missing. Those should be the first step, something I should be able to find in any IM client/network. Why not yet?
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