1. THE EVOLUTION OF MESSAGING Submitted to: Mr. Bouzane

2. THE LETTER There is no evidence of when the first letter was sent, but the United States Postal Service started on July 26, 1775. This service works by Person A bringing the package or letter they want to send to the post office, then the post office bring it to Person B. This process was extremely lengthy, but was the only way to message people who didn’t live within walking distance.

3. THE LETTER PT.2 The letter doesn’t have many advantages in this day and age, but before it was a convenient solution to deliver a message to relative or friend who lived across the country or even in a different town. The downfall to this was that it took a long time for your message to be delivered, and sometimes it would get lost.

4. E-MAIL The first world-wide internet service was developed in the late 1960. This was very convenient because you could instantly send a message to anyone instantaneously. This also presented the problem of spam. You would constantly get advertisements sent to your inbox. This was fixed with the implementation of Junk, Spam, and Trash folders

5. E-MAIL PT.2 Another implementation that came later was the ability to send an attachment. This meant you could send videos, pictures, documents and pretty much any file you wanted. This became a problem with spam, because now you could be sent a virus and not even realize it. This still hasn’t changes today, but people have been become more and more aware of it, though this issue still exists.

6. INSTANT MESSAGING AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) was one of the first instant messaging services. It was released in 1997 and sparked an entire new way to chat to your friends. It was based off the system of creating a username, adding your friends username, and then being able to send messages. It was much simpler than IRC (internet relay chat) because you didn’t need to join different channels, and it was more 1 on 1.

7. INSTANT MESSAGING PT.2 AIM had a lot of competition later on, and was actually killed by MSN Messenger (Microsoft Network Messenger) that delivered an AIM-like service, but much cleaner and faster. The emoticons looked better, and it wasn’t very long before it over took AIM. MSN Messenger was huge until around 2005-2008 when “Skype” improved it’s IM and started to improve all aspects, leaving MSN in the dust.. It allowed you to video chat in a much faster format, as well as brought instant messaging into the mix. Microsoft bought this service in 2011 for $8.5 Billion.

8. TEXT MESSAGING Text messaging in a form of sending 1 message from a cell phone to another cell phone. It’s a very basic concept, and in terms of convenience, it is right in between e-mail and instant messaging. It is different from instant messaging as you don’t need internet service, just a phone. It’s downfall is that you may not get an answer to your message right away, and that it is not free. 1 text message can cost $0.25 without a cellphone plan. AIM offers a service where you can text straight from your computer to anywhere in North America for free.

9. TEXT MESSAGING PT. 2 Apple has recently invented the iMessage, which allows iPhone users to instant message each other from anywhere. It can operate off of 3G or WiFi, depending on which one you have. It also allows iPod Touch users, iPad Users, and iPhone users to message each other through this service. Recently they have implemented emoticons into it, bringing it more and more close to an IM service. It’s a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t quite compare with the speed and service of Skype.

10. FACTS  The first e-mail was “QWERTYUIOP” sent to the creator as a test in 1971.  MSN Messenger was changed to “Windows Live Messenger” after Microsoft’s decision to change the e-mail service “hotmail” to “Windows Live”.  Skype was designed in 2003 but didn’t take off until around 2005-2008, when it was acquired by eBay inc..  The average IM session is 5 minutes long.

11. BIBLIOGRAPHY Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org/ http://www.wikipedia.org/ MSG Stuff http://www.msgstuff.com/news/post/574-5-interesting-facts-you-didnt-know-about- windows-live-messenger/ eHow http://www.ehow.com/info_8033336_skype.html