How Does Instant Messaging Work?
Instant Messaging is a premium feature. For the ability to send instant messages, upgrade to premium. Anyone can REPLY to an instant message, but only premium members can INITIATE an instant message. For this feature to work you need to allow popups on your system. To send an instant message, click on the lightbulb you see next to the thumbnails. This alerts you to when someone is online. Through your privacy settings on your “Edit Profile” screen you can prevent anyone from instant messaging (and knowing you are online) or else only allow your friends to instant message you.
Instant messaging networks consist of clients and servers. A user installs a client that connects to a server operated by the instant messaging network vendor, such as AOL or ICQ, or Yahoo Messenger. (It should be noted that because they use different protocols, the different instant messaging services are not interoperable. Therefore, ICQ users can only communicate with other ICQ users, not with users of other instant messaging services.) All users that sign up for instant messaging are given a unique identifier, which can be either a name or a number. The user then gives out the unique identifier to people that he or she wants to communicate with via the instant messaging network. The user starts an instant messaging session by authenticating to the server. When two authenticated users want to communicate, the following sequence occurs. • Alice instructs the instant messaging client to send a text-message to Bill. The client creates a packet containing the message and sends it to the
