Although I'm anxious for 'social networking' as we know it to disintegrate, for many people it removes a lot of the overhead of managing personal relationships.

Although I'm anxious for 'social networking' as we know it to disintegrate, for many people it removes a lot of the overhead of managing personal relationships. I think that's probably at the root of IM's perceived decline. Having said that, XMPP has really opened up tons of possibilities for IM from a tools perspective and from a point-to-multipoint perspective that isn't really apparent to the casual Internet user. I'm getting more mileage out of IM than ever.