Look out spam, here comes spim
After nearly ruining the usefulness of email with billions of spams, unscrupulous marketers are now turning their attention to instant messaging (IM).
In recent weeks, several reports have been released detailing the emergence of spim, or spam-laden instant messages. The numbers vary, but one thing is clear, spim is making inroads and it won't be long before it hits millions of IM windows worldwide.
One report from the Radicati Group says that the number of spim messages is set to almost triple from 400 million instant messages in 2003 to about 1.2 billion instant messages by year-end 2004.
"While this may not seem like a big number compared to the projected 34.8 billion spam email messages at the end of 2004, the invasion of spim is still greatly unwanted and proof yet again of spammers being far from defeated," the firm claimed.
