oh its her again. reply or not, Its a mess, either ways . why the hell did I leave my gtalk status online !

…unwanted chat pings, feeling awkward while closing a conversation, don’t know if ur reply will be missed as they log out.

Well that is what i call the transactional mental burden of an IM (gtalk, yahoo cha, AOL messenger ).
DM (direct messaging) on microblogs (twitter, identi.ca, yammer..) wins on all counts- no one will ever “miss” a direct messages, they have their own repository, there is no urgency in replying ( a real emergency would warrant a phone call not an IM or a DM) and I can remain in my zone away from the unwanted pings.

On top of it I am not tied to the chat client – I can access my microblogger from websites, browser apps, desktop apps and even over the phone. None of it is a push, i.e. microblog when I like, where I like.For an added plus – everyone in the twitter stream is a contact I can chat with ! I dont need to search for their email addreses to add them to the chat client !

So here is what DM’s trum IM’s in :
1) location / device independence
2) response time flexibility
3) scalable friends list
Though I think spam is till an issue with DM’s but Its is much less embarrassing than the unwanted pop-up at the wrong time!

And if you really really need to talk to me call me .

Have you switched to a DM only mode yet ?