User Base
Many of the numbers listed in this section are not directly comparable, and some are speculative. While some numbers are given by the owners of a complete instant messaging system, others are provided by commercial vendors of a part of a distributed system. Some companies may be motivated to inflate their numbers to raise advertising earnings or attract partners, clients, or customers. Importantly, some numbers are reported as the number of active users (with no shared standard of that activity), others indicate total user accounts, while others indicate only the users logged in during an instance of peak use.
| Users | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Service | Peak | Active | Total | Date/source |
| AIM | 4 million | 100 million | Active:April 2012 Total: January 2006 | |
| Blauk | 0.7 million* | *Peak is per day | ||
| eBuddy | 35 million | October 2006, including 4 million mobile users | ||
| Gadu-Gadu | 6 million | May 2009 Most users in Poland | ||
| IBM Lotus Sametime | 40 million | December 2009. Total is licensed, entitled users in enterprises | ||
| ICQ | 50 million | CNET February 8, 2010 | ||
| iMessage | 140 million | 140 million | 140 million | Engadget June 11, 2012 |
| IMVU | 1 million | June 2007 | ||
| Lync | 3 million | December 2011 Total voice lines | ||
| Meebo | 1 million | October 2006 | ||
| MXit | 11 million | January 29, 2009 Total includes 9 million in South Africa | ||
| Paltalk | 3.3 million* | August 2006 *Peak is unique visitors per month | ||
| Skype | 30 million | 1090 million | March 2011 Total as of April, 13th, 2012 (can be checked when searching users in Skype 5.x) | |
| Tencent QQ | 160 million | 440 million* | 990 million | Q's official website Most users in China. *Active includes users with multiple accounts |
| Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger) | 330 million | June 2009 | ||
| Wireclub | 3 million | November 2011 | ||
| Xfire | 16 million | May 2010 | ||
| Yahoo! Messenger | Yahoo has 248 million users, but not all use IM.Jan 17, 2008 | |||
Read more about this topic: Instant Messaging
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