1. What is Instant Messaging (IM)?
2. What will this site focus on?
3. What do all those wacky abbreviations and acronyms mean?

IM is a type of communications service that enables one to create a private chat room with another individual. Typically, the instant-messaging system alerts the user to whenever somebody on their private list is online -- a capability known as "presence." They can then initiate a chat session with that particular individual. People can communicate with each other by typing with a PC, wireless device (cell phone, PDA, etc.) or other Internet appliance/device. Or, they can use a combination of these gadgets to communicate.

A chat room, meantime, is a virtual room where a chat session takes place. Technically, a chat room is really a channel, but the term "room" is used to promote the chat metaphor.

There's a big difference between chat rooms and IM, though: A chat room environment, typically handles two or people involved in one or many discussions. Instant messaging almost always involves one conversation between two people.

Several competing instant messaging systems exist. Unfortunately, there's no standard as of now. This means that both people need to use the same instant messaging system. That's important to remember both on the consumer side and the enterprise side of the IM world.

Instant messaging also exists, to a certain extent, in the wireless world. Short-messaging services (SMS) is a system that sends short text messages to mobile phones. The process isn't quite as "instant" as wired IM is, though. SMS messages are stored on servers and then sent to recipients.
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What will the site focus on?

InstantMessagingPlanet.com will look at how companies use instant messaging and associated technologies to conduct business, and the specific obstacles/problems they face with using IM technology in our connected world -- both on the "wired" and "wireless" sides of IM. We'll also keep a close eye on the businesses wanting to sell their services to such companies. We'll cover those areas by bringing you daily news, features, Case Studies and Corporate Profiles of companies in the field.

Of course, there are many IM companies out there that offer a variety of services for businesses of all kinds, shapes and sizes. We'll bring you the news and insights into those firms so that firms looking to use corporate IM can make informed decisions about their technology purchases.

We will also look at some of the products that companies roll out for consumer use.

We'll examine overall usage trends and/or products for consumer-to-consumer instant messaging. You can also find resources for this topic at other internet.com sites like Webopedia or InternetNews.com.

While we won't focus on every single announcements in regards to the services on the consumer side of the IM field — the AOL IMs, the Yahoo Messengers and the MSN Messengers of the world — we will look at some of the bigger news in the consumer IM field.

When you talk about consumer IM and the public IM networks, security is always a big concern.
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Question: What do all those wacky abbreviations and acronyms mean?
With the popularity and rise in usage of real time text-based communications such as instant messaging, e-mail, Internet and online gaming chat rooms, discussion boards and cellphone text messaging came the emergence of a new language tailored to the immediacy and compactness of these new communication media. If you have ever been in a chat room or received an instant message or text message from someone that seemed to be in its own foreign language, this Webopedia Quick Reference will help you decipher the text chat lingo by providing the definitions to over 500 frequently used chat abbreviations.  If you know of a text message abbreviation that is not included in our list, please let us know. Online auction abbreviations can be found here, in a separate Webopedia Quick Reference.
 

Smiley Faces -  Showing Emotions With Text Chat
A 'smiley face', often called a smiley or emoticon, is used in text communications to convey an emotion within a text message. Smiley faces are used in the same way voice changes and facial expressions are used in face-to-face or telephone conversation. For example, if you were joking with someone and send a text message saying "GAL (get a life)" the person receiving your message may think you are making a rude comment to them. If you send the same message with a "happy smiley" : ) following the text, the person would then understand you were "smiling" - or joking around when you said that. Showing emotions through characters in text messaging helps the receiver correctly interpret your intent and meaning.

To create a smiley face you use your standard keyboard characters and punctuation marks in sequences that look like facial expressions might. When viewing text smiley faces, they are all sideways. Here are some basics to get you started in understanding what the faces are:

The close bracket represents a sideways smile   )
Add in the colon and you have sideways eyes   :
Put them together to make a smiley face  :)
Use the dash  -   to add a nose   :-)
Change the colon to a semi-colon ; and you have a winking face ;)  with a nose  ;-)
Put a lower case o (halo) on top and now you have a winking, smiling angel 0;) with a nose 0;-)
Use the letter 8 in place of the colon for sunglasses  8-)

Some chat and instant message programs automatically translate text smiley faces into graphics. In AOL Instant messenger (AIM), for example, if you type out the characters to make a "happy face" followed by "sad face" followed by "cool sunglasses"  you would enter the following characters:

:)   :(   8-)

Once you've entered the text however, AIM converts the smiley text to graphics, if it can recognize the smiley pattern, and what you see on the screen will look like this:

Here are few examples of different smiley faces and their meanings:
 

Icon Meaning :) Standard smile :-) With nose :-E Buck-tooth >-) Evil grin :( Sad or frown smile :-( Sad with nose :-< Super sad (((H))) Hugs :-X Kiss on the lips `:-) One eyebrow raised :^) A broken nose :-& tongue tied E-:-) a Ham radio operator

Icon Meaning :-# With braces :'-) Happy Crying {:-) Toupee smile ;) Winking smile ;-) Winking smile with nose O:-) I'm an angel (boy) O*-) I'm an angel (girl) |-O Yawn (:-D Gossip, blabbermouth @>--;-- Rose =^.^= Cat O.o Confused C=:-) A chef

Icon Meaning :-! "Foot in mouth" :-D Laughter :*) Drunk smile :@ Exclamation "What???" :-@ Scream :-0 Yell %-( Confused :-----) Long nose (Liar!) :-.) Madonna :-($) Put your money where your mouth is (:I An egghead |-O Yawning