Instant message multiple buddies at once using AIM Blast

Posted on January 8, 2009 at 5:39 am

If you are using AOL Instant Messenger for your IM needs, then you will be happy to know of a cool new feature called AIM Blast. Basically, it allows you to create a “group” that shows up in your Buddy List, which you can then send messages to at any time.

The message will go to anyone who you added to the group. So basically it’s a permanent buddy that lets you communicate to several people at once. So what’s the different between a AIM Blast group and a chat room?

Simply put, every time you want to talk to several of your AIM buddies at once, you have to create a chat room and then invite everyone. When you create a Blast group, your friends will have to accept being part of the group ONCE and then you can IM them forever without ever having to invite everyone to a chat room.

I really wish this was part of Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger because I really hate creating chat rooms, especially since I talk to the same group of people over and over again.

You can use it in two ways, either to have group discussions or simply to send out notifications to multiple buddies at once. When you setup the group at blast.aim.com, you will have the option of allowing the other buddies in the group to be able to respond or to only allow yourself to send out IMs.

Once you setup the group, it will show up in your Buddy List just like a normal buddy.

You might be thinking to yourself that this is great sometimes, but it could get really annoying if you join and group and someone is constantly sending message out all the time. Luckily, once you create an account at blast.aim.com, you can modify your settings for the groups you have joined to receive or block messages temporarily.

Once you send an IM to the group and people start responding, all the messages will show up in the chat box just as if you were in a chat room.

For AIM users, it’s a great way to chat with multiple buddies without worrying about a chat room. If you have a group of friends you tend to always create chat rooms for, then AIM Blast might be a better option for you! I hope GTalk and Yahoo Messenger follow suit. Enjoy! Source: DownloadSquad

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