The state of instant messaging (IM) is rather like email was back in the days of X.400.

With some notable exceptions, X.400 was mainly used as a way to interconnect incompatible email networks. However, there were problems:

• Interconnectivity was laborious to define.
• There were lots of gateways between products/services.
• Messages lost data and metadata when they went between systems.

Very similar, in fact, to today’s IM world.

… David Ferris, with thanks to IBM’s David Via