What Instant Messaging Client Do You Use? [Poll]

poll-im-client It’s time for another MUO Poll. Every poll we had so far was a smashing success. You guys did a great job. Thanks to you, we had a clear winner in every case.

This time we want to ask you about instant messaging programs. What is your IM client of choice ? Do you use a multi-protocol client that supports multiple accounts (i.e Pidgin) or prefer to stick with a single-network chat client like MSN, Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger etc. Let us know below. You can select up to 2 clients.

Download Links

* The newest IM client out there and received lots of positive coverage recently.

While we are talking about Instant messaging cleints, here are some earlier MakeUseOf articles you might be also interested in:

Please share your thoughts in comments.

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Aibek Esengulov

The guy behind MakeUseOf.com. Follow him and MakeUseOf on Twitter @MakeUseOf. For more details check out MakeUseOf about page.

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  • Jack

    I was about to vote when this annoying pop-up appeared right over the vote button. I hope this is not a regular thing with this website. I do enjoy the content, but I hate pop-ups more.

    • http://makeuseof.com Aibek

      i am note sure what you saw there, but we don’t have serve popups. Do you still see it? Can you send us the screenshot. Email me at aibek[at]akeuseof[dot]com

      • bob

        The pop-up was obviously the one warning that the max amount of choices was two, I got caught out too :) I use three!

  • http://remix-it.tumblr.com/ Greg

    Digsby would be great if it would run on Linux, so I’ve turned back to Psi

  • Sharon

    I vote none of the above. Though I use pidgin and trillian some, I much prefer Palringo to either of them.

  • http://www.keithkeirstead.com/blog Keith

    Digsby when under windows and Pidgin when under Linux.

  • zianeu

    Sometimes I use Meebo. It’s good if you don’t have a lot of memory or are on a strange computer and don’t want to download a lot of things in a pinch.

    • Aibek

      I like meebo as well. Also check out imo.im, it has plenty of cool features.

  • http://embeemb.blogspot.com embeee

    I’m on Ubuntu and use and aMSN for MSN. There’s something incomplete about pidgin for me to switch to it completely..

  • FekketCantenel

    You left out mIRC! I use it for all my IRC chat. I use Pidgin for Gtalk and AIM (and sometimes MSN, but I usually leave it disabled).

  • http://www.rakshitk.com Rakshit

    I prefer Pidgin over any other IMs. It even helps us to find contacts who blocked you on Gtalk.
    :-)

    • Aibek

      “It even helps us to find contacts who blocked you on Gtalk.” – Really? That’s quite handy.

  • Krasen

    i uese IRC clients (xchat)

  • http://www.betterthantherapy.net Mark O’Neill

    I used Pidgin for a long time up until recently but a couple of weeks back, I went back to Google Talk and Skype. I guess I was a bit bored with the plain no-frills Pidgin interface. I also missed the new mail notification that Google Talk has. Plus I realised that virtually everyone I communicated with was either only on Google Talk or Skype! The other chat networks seem to have fallen by the wayside.

    • Laurence

      Yea PIdgin is so boring! Haha its great to have on a thumb drive though

    • http://www.shankarganesh.com Shankar Ganesh

      Yup, Pidgin is too plain. I can’t get to transfer files with my buddies when on Jabber.

    • http://www.betterthantherapy.net Mark O’Neill

      Plus I also found Pidgin to be very buggy at times. I would for instance move a contact to a particular group and the next day, the contact will be in a different group. Or a Yahoo contact would show up as a MSN contact (how the hell THAT happened I have no idea) and then Pidgin would refuse to delete it.

      Or I would delete a contact and when I reboot Pidgin, the contact would be BACK. I would also be logged out of chat networks for no reason.

      In the end, my patience ran out and Pidgin was toast.

  • Laurence

    Very interesting…. had no idea Digsby was this popular!

    Hey btw who is loving facebook chat integration? I never use facebook or the internal chat system… but having in in Digsby has been very useful. Being able to crack the skype API would make Digsby the killer app.

    That and and a bit more optimizing… does anyone else get lots of gmail and twitter dropouts?

  • Vale

    Yahoo Messenger all the way! how is it that such few people use it? it’s the cleanest interface ever, the smileys are cute (not like the msn creepy ones), the voice chat quality is superb!

  • daikokuzyuu

    dont forget funpidgin, pidgin’s fork, cuz of the godfeature of autoresize text area…

  • doorknob60

    Pidgin mainly, but I use Skype sometimes too (I voted both)

  • http://pctonic.blogspot.com/ Ashutosh Mishra

    I always like plain stuff, so Pidgin for me. :)

    Skype is great for webcam and voice chatting.

  • nameq

    I hate Pidgin: it is the worst messaging client of all time, it doesnt even support MSN status messages…very poor. only the icq protocol is good, the other ones suck.

  • http://www.hackyourday.com Daniel

    It’s awesome that Digsby, such a newcomer is right there on top. I think they will be going to Linux soon, but not sure.

  • http://shreela.wordpress.com Sherri

    In this order:

    Trillian – got too bloated for me
    Miranda – quit working for some unknown reason, support a bit lacking
    Pidgin – was ok; I didn’t install lots of plugins, but it worked and wasn’t bloated
    Digsby – I like it a lot so far; Yahoo POP went down a while, but came back, and pretty good support, either through blog comments, or bug reports through the app, including ability to send screenshot if needed. I like having Twitter on it too.

  • catasta

    I use QIP http://qipim.com/en/ at home and meebo at work.

  • mark

    When I’m working on my computer I don’t like to be interrupted. So I’m going to show just how out-dated I am.

    I don’t use an Instant Messaging client! Nope, none at all!

    The only people I need to contact “right now” are on my cell phone. And, NO, I don’t text! Everyone else gets emails!

    Maybe next time you can include “NONE” as one of the options, after all not everyone out there installs the latest service, just because it new. If I don’t use something or don’t think I will then I’m not going to put it on my computer.

    Thanks

  • maven2k

    If I actually open and IM client I use Pidgin, but most of the time I just use the one built in Gmail. I don’t think that qualifies as Google talk, but since you can log into yahoo messenger with it, that pretty much covers most of my friends.

  • http://www.anewmorning.com/2008/05/19/6-best-instant-messengers-im-for-mac-os-x/ Moin

    Adium is one of the best!

  • http://techmalaya.com Syahid A.

    Digsby is my current choice but sometimes the automatic updates does not work perfectly.

  • Sound Of Vision

    I have ICQ, MSN, Gtalk and Y!IM. MSN is my mostly used IM together with Gtalk (not everyone has gmail account) so I voted for those 2.

    I use ICQ rarely, but it was my first IM so I kept it because of sentimentality and one person there. It’s just a bit complicated…And I like the look of Y!IM but don’t have many people there and sometimes blocks.

    I heard of Digsby and if it supports all other accounts (MSN, Y!IM, Gtalk, ICQ etc) I might download it!
    What is important for me with IM clients is that is should be fun and easy to use. I love smilies and themes and nice looking. Can you collect smilies on Digsby like you can on MSN?

  • http://www.worldstart.com Amanda

    Um. Why isn’t AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) on the list?

    Trillian worked lovely and then all of a sudden stopped, and gave me connection issues up the ying/yang. So not anymore, I did like the format though.

    Have to check some of these out, maybe I’ll find a new favorite.

  • marco

    AIM is missing. Anyway, I would love to use another IM client, but there ain’t any other software that supports REAL video and voice chat on the MSN network. So i will probably stick with the big Windows Live Messenger until 2020 :(

  • Neil Watson

    I don’t use any. I have never found the need. Occasionally use Skype chat.but at best once a month.

  • amit

    Yahoo & MSN