T’was Just a Matter of Time
I hate to say I told you so. (image: Blizzard)
So, pretty much exactly one year ago I promised you the Blizzard Instant Messenger. Now, finally, Blizzard has come around to stealing my idea (and without even employing or paying me for it! Scandalous!) Sure, so far it is only for the iPhone and coming soon on Android, but I don’t see why they should shy away from a PC application. Though, knowing the marketing folks, it’ll probably be through facebook. Ah well.
The one thing that annoys me a bit about this development is that it will force me to run yet another instant messaging program. Trillian does a good job of combining the common ones, but with Steam and now Blizzard adding on their own proprietary systems I feel as if we could use some more standardization for sure. Also, the messenger doesn’t seem to have the cross-game features that normal Blizzard char has. And I have to pay for it. Still, the general direction is a good one.
Possibly related posts (automatically generated):
- Introducing BIM: The Blizzard Instant Messenger I spent some time over the weekend waiting for various...
- I Actually Like RealID Various other bloggers have voiced their disapproval for Blizzard’s new...
Longasc
21 Apr, 2011
Star Trek Online allows various Instant Messengers to connect to the chat server and access user channels and send direct messages to other users. The difference: It’s not proprietary. Steam, Blizzard, Apple – everyone wants to have his won social network, chat system and basically walled garden.
I wonder if the intention which is nothing else but customer retention would not work even better if they would be more open instead of making people run X social networks and applications. They might rather make people think about making a choice for one or the other.