(I am sitting in the concourse on a hot spot at Newark airport. I just literally fought my way through a crowd after it was announced that there were two seats exit row available. It was me versus three other guys. I got it.)
My brothers use AOL Instant Messenger quite often. All of their college friends use it and they all post away messages. People check each other’s away messages. I think these “away messages” are a primitive blog. They will update their away message, “Just went to the YMCA” or “I can’t believe the Giants lost!!” If it doesn’t already exist, there should be a plug-in to AIM that would allow people to archive their away messages in a daily format, and keep an away message online even if AIM is not open. Someone in the open source community develop it, and I’ll be beta tester #1.
Great idea!
Me and my partner Ryan Farley did it last year for a ‘Senior Thesis Project’ at Wake Forest University. See BuddyGopher at http://www.buddygopher.com/ for more information. We displayed the messages in aggregate form (like Bloglines or any other RSS reader) and archived old Away Messages (creating ‘Away Message blogs’) – all through the tiny HTTP browser built into the AIM client Buddy List.
Our service is down indefinitely, so you can’t demo 🙁 We couldn’t keep up with our growth – still working on a solution that properly addresses scaling.
By the way, I really like your blog. When I read about you starting it a few months back, I figured “Awesome, but can he keep at it?”
Props from Atlanta, Georgia.
Update: We have re-launched BuddyGopher. If you’d like to check your friends away messages all at once, or see your friends previous away messages turned into bite-sized blogs, check out our website at http://www.buddygopher.com/