IRC wasn't even the beginning. Chance are, your OS still retains a message user function buried in it. Good ones would even store your messages when you were of

IRC wasn't even the beginning. Chance are, your OS still retains a message user function buried in it. Good ones would even store your messages when you were offline. They would save them to what some termed their wall. If you had permissions, then you'd be able to message whole groups of users. You might even be able to give a broad message to everyone called the MotD. I'm not sure of the absolute beginnings, but there has probably been IM since they first networked two computers together. It was probably the second thing they wrote and the first message was probably a fart joke.