The only features necessary for an instant messaging program should be basic text, basic text formating, smilies, and logging.
To be honest, how often during a conversation online do most people utilize all of the text formating features like colored backgrounds, colored text, superscript, etc. etc. Besides the occasional Ctrl + B or Ctrl + I, it is very rare. Otherwise, it is used to really annoy people in an irritating conversation. So get rid of everything except bolding and italics, the rest can be achieved through CAPS and *stars*.
Smilies are a must. In online conversations, many times it is hard to tell the tone of voice or real meaning behind what someones says, compared to when talking in person and seeing someones body language and facial expressions. Through smilies, we can achieve this. However, there are only about four necessary smilies, the happy face
, sad face
, tongue
, and big smile
. Besides that, the rest are just about never used.
I love and use logging often, even though it is completely unnecessary. It is helpful and allows me to check what someone said, links that were sent to me, etc.
All in all, simplicity is best. If I want to webcam, I'll open a specific program to do so, or voice over the internet.