IM Predictions for 2007

Google Talk will (finally) connect to AIM. Sure, the speculation goes all the way back to 2005, when Google acquired a 5% stake in America Online, but 2007 will be the year that it all comes to fruition. And with one of the former lead programmers for AIM, Justin Uberti, now working for Google up in their Kirkland, WA office (where they work on Google Talk), it all kind of makes sense.

Geo-awareness will become hip. Yeah Meetro has been doing this for a while now, as has Google's Dodgeball service, and others, but as a means to help people get together with their friends ("where you at?), this kind of service, coupled with online presence and messaging will be what everyone wants. The MySpace crowd will use it for impromptu gatherings; parents will use it to keep tabs on their kids; and predators will be shut out by smarter privacy controls.

Phones and software for mobile devices will make VoIP accessible. Your mom still won't know that VoIP means Voice over IP (or what that means), but the proliferation of devices made for Skype, WLM, and Yahoo voice chat will make VoIP easier and more common. These phones were all over CES last January, and now the prices are reasonable, and wireless access points in the home commonplace. It'll be a hot gift next Christmas.

According to David Girouard, VP and General Manager at Google Enterprise, Google Talk's VoIP capabilities will be extended to integrate with phone systems. Not really a prediction, but a promise.

John Dvorak posits that Skype and it's clones have become "...so popular that the various phone companies offering Internet connectivity saw it as a threat to their core business, although they were already gouging the customers for Internet connectivity. With EV-DO, most contracts forbid using Skype, so the mobile-phone providers can double-gouge the customer. Apparently, the once-powerful public utilities commissions that used to protect consumers against this nonsense have evolved into lapdogs for these jokers. Maybe the public will wake up someday and protect itself, and perhaps Skype will be the triggering mechanism. Seems like a trend to me."

Corporate IM security and compliance supplier Akonix predicts that "2007 will see a dramatic increase in legal actions against employers for hostile workplace and sexual harassment claims stemming from inappropriate use of IM at work. Dubbed the 'Foley Syndrome' after former Congressman Mark Foley's infamous indiscretions over IM, the harassment of colleagues over IM will likely become front-page news during 2007."