Many people ask me, when they see my MSN Messenger’s or Yahoo Messenger’s buddy list, why I have myself as a contact. First of all, let me say that I’m definitely not the only one that does that.
Now, why do I do that? The “official” reason is that this way I’m never alone online. When I look at my list, there’s always someone online. Me. That’s a little comforting, especially if you’re having one of those blue nights when you feel all alone in front of your computer and you log on hoping to chat with a friend and no one is online.
The real reason is that I just wanted to see what happens. It’s the hacker in me, I guess. I didn’t just want to see if I can add myself, I wanted to see if I can talk to myself. It’s funny to see how different products handle the case of self-adding.
In Microsoft’s MSN Messenger you can add yourself, but you can’t chat with yourself. You can send an email message to yourself, though. I sometimes wonder about that. I mean, why would you allow the one but not the other? About the chat, it’s probably a protocol or architecture issue. The thing is that the programmers in Microsoft handled the case of self-adding users specifically, because you cannot open a chat window with yourself, but you can still add yourself to your list. An interesting choice, if you ask me. By the way, the current version of MSN Messenger has a bug, which allows you (in a specific case) to open a chat window with yourself, but you still can’t send a message in that window. That is forbidden by the server.
In Yahoo! Messenger, on the other hand, not only you can add yourself, but you can freely chat with yourself. I think I tried voice calls with myself once, but it didn’t work since the configuration of Yahoo! Messenger would use the same sound card for the call for both parties (me and myself). My first chat with myself went something like this:
Me: Hi — This is the message I sent
Me: Hi — This is the message I got. Surprising, right? Well, it’s not like Yahoo! would do something cool like putting an AliceBot to talk back to you. That would have been funny.
And that was it. It was the shortest conversation I have ever had on IM. Yet, it was all I’ll ever need :)