This completely supports the idea that when you use a free service, you are not the customer.
Away/busy messages and invisibility are comforts for users. They go away when execs see that doing so bumps some (probably bullshit anyway) "engagement" metric by 5%.
Discord has presence indicators and is fairly widespread.
Re:AIM will shut down after 20 years
by snarkyturtle on Friday October 06, 2017 @08:02PM
(#15421375)
Slack has an 'online indicator' and even AIM-style away messages.
But slack also has no inherently established paradigm of real time vs asynchronous communication.
>Somewhere along the line the presence feature got dropped, and now we're always 'Available' even when we're not.
Before you were only available when you had your PC on, you were connected to the Internet, and your IM program was open. Now you carry your perpetually running IM program in your perpetually on and perpetually connected mobile in your pocket.
Of the older IM clients; Lync had it, so did Lotus Sametime, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, and of course AIM.
Somewhere along the line the presence feature got dropped, and now we're always 'Available' even when we're not.