Yahoo

My daughter has reached an age where all her friends are on MSN. While the school is concerned about it, I think that (occassionally monitored) online chat is actually a useful skill. Most of the chat is what you’d expect of tweens, misunderstandings and hurt feelings can happen very easily. That’s just like email.

I refuse to run MSN Messenger though. I just think it’s sufficiently insecure and closed source to be avoided. Most kids don’t know how MSN works, so they just do what their chat partner tells them to do. I’d rather my kids not install things just so they can get a neat smiley.

Tags: AIM, aMsn, Gadu-gadu, gaim, ICQ, IM-clients, IRC, jabber, MSN, Yahoo