A redefinition of instant messaging in remote collaboration

Instant Messaging (IM) is one of the most important communication media for remote collaboration. But the confusion between the IM and specific IM software hindered the development of IM software for group collaboration, hence limited the possibility of remote cooperation. To take full advantage of IM, a redefinition is needed. In this work the attributes of IM including response time, multiparty, retrieving, and expressive power were discussed. Then, a new definition of IM and its quantification scales was proposed. Furthermore, an IM implement framework based on REST was suggested to guide the implementation of IM.