Competing networks stunted the potential of Internet IM. At one point a few years ago I was connecting to half a dozen IM networks often to talk to one or two p

Competing networks stunted the potential of Internet IM. At one point a few years ago I was connecting to half a dozen IM networks often to talk to one or two people per service. When SMS started to become widely used I think the effort of tracking someone down on these little IM islands just wasn't worth it anymore and text messaging reached a much larger audience of people who aren't tied to their computer 24x7. There are something like 25 billion text messages sent per year these days. That offsets the 8% decline in Internet IM and then some. So as usual the predictions were mostly right but instant messaging developed in a different direction than people expected.