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The person who invented the "is typing" feature: https://slate.com/technology/2014/02/typing-indicator-in-chat-i-built-it-and-im-not-sorry.html https://slate.c

• Aachen 5y ago
  MSN in 1999 was the first according to the person who made it for Microsoft, David Auerbach. > the feature was well-received and soon copied by AOL and Yahoo, the other two big IM forces back then. No big insights about typing indicators in the article, though, e.g no user research was done or anything. Near the bottom of the article is an interesting bit about messengers showing the message, not just a typing indicator, in realtime. I guess people nowadays (I certainly would) think of it as something Google tried, but it sounds like this predates MSN. The author says they prefer that over typing indicators.
  • vidarh 5y ago
    > guess people nowadays (I certainly would) think of it as something Google tried, but it sounds like this predates MSN. The author says they prefer that over typing indicators. "talk" which he describes dates back to the early 80's, but there were predecessors on systems predating Unix as well long before that.