IM user population comparison?
Rarely do I spend so much time attempting to craft Google
search terms with so little success. I’ve looking for information about
the relative user populations of the various instant messaging
protocols—how many people use AIM? Yahoo! Messenger? MSN Messenger?
Jabber/XMPP?
After an hour of off-and-on rephrasing of my burning
question (“instant messaging protocol breakdown”, “how many AIM users”,
“IM user populations”, etc., and factorial permutations of the
foregoing) I finally found a few useful (2004) articles: Jeremy
Zawodny’s IM marketshare roundup, Wired
News on the IM wars. The Wired article is sprinkled with Jupiter Media
Metrix numbers: AIM 44M (52%); Yahoo! 19M (23%); MSN 17M (20%); ICQ 4M (5%).
Obviously those percentages are a pretty fidgety, not taking into account any
other messaging protocols besides the Big Four, and glossing over dual IM
citizenship (a must-have nowadays, thanks to the Balkanized messaging
landscape). Anyone have anything better?