According to my calculations, I have 281 people in my IM lists. This includes AIM, MSNIM, YIM, and Jabber. That’s a lot of people. A couple times I’ve had AOL tell me I can’t add someone, because I have all that I’m allowed to have. I remove a few that haven’t been on in a while, and away we go.
My largest group is my “Work” group, people I work with. Many of them I don’t really ever talk to, but want them there in case I need to. At 8:42 on monday morning, 17 of 68 are online. That’s about normal.
Next is “Buddies”. There are a bunch in there that are defunct, people that have changed their name, or don’t ever get on. and I’m too lazy to remove them. Some are people who just get on once a month or so, like my college roomie. At 8:43 am there are 9 of 92 online.
Next is MSN. I have 3 of 7 on right now. I only use it because there are a few people I know (clients specifically) who use it exclusivly. There are times when I’ll go a whole month without ever logging into MSN.
Then there’s my jabber list, 1 of 13 online right now. There’s generally a lot more on, and they tend to be the more tech knowledgeable of my friends. Occasionally there are more of my jabber contacts online than work or even buddies. That makes me happy.
I have a “Gospelcom” list, the folks I know at Gospelcom who use it. I try pretty hard not to abuse that, and not request support “through the back door” as it were, and I generally treat them like normal friends on my list.
I have a Yahoo account, but haven’t logged into it since they broke the protocol to block my client. Since it’s been about 3 months since a release of my client, I think they’re trying to make it work with Yahoo again. We’ll see what happens.
I marvel at the number of people I have on my list, but when I look at the entire list, there aren’t many listings that make me think “Who’s that?” or “I never talk to them, let’s get them off”. And then I marvel that I don’t spend all of every day chatting with people. But I really don’t. I typically spend a cumulative 25 minutes in IM chat during a day. Granted, that’s typically talking to several people at once, but that doesn’t take any more out of my day.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
