Total number of AIM users worldwide?

[staffell]

Just a quick question, for research I need to know how many users there are of AIM worldwide. Does anyone know this statistic?
Thanks, Dave.

[Tigerblade]

you might get a reliable number if you try contacting the good people at AIM... although honestly I dont know if anyone would have numbers for this. They could track the number of downloads, but that doesnt necessarily reflect the number of users. they could track the number of screennames, but many people have more than one (i have ~4 i think) so that's not accurate either. they could track the average number of screennames in use, but that's not really accurate either since you can link screennames together.

long story short, i dont know if you'd be able to get an accurate figure for this sort of thing.

[staffell]

To be honest as I need the information for my dissertation, so I'm not particularly bothered about an accurate figure haha

I'll try that though - I should probably do that for the other messenger programs too I guess....

Thanks dude.

[henry_nyc]

listen to the first bbb podcast- they go thru user numbers for all the IM services

[henry_nyc]

AIM 53million
MSN 27million
Yhoo 22million
goog 866k

from the podcast