Historically it was useful to write a bot that told you when someone's AIM presence info changed because it actually told you they were sitting down in front of

Historically it was useful to write a bot that told you when someone's AIM presence info changed because it actually told you they were sitting down in front of their desktop PC in the computer room and maybe interested in having a conversation. You could infer a lot of signal from this bit of info -- like, what room in the house are they in, what's going on in the cadence of their day, did they just finish dinner? The context is just totally different today. Many people are constantly carrying a phone and pretty close to always interruptible. Whether "it's a good time to talk" I think is harder to determine than it used to be. Practices and cultures vary widely so I hate to generalize but, at least for the people I know, something has changed with how online people are and our social connections to one another.