Using email to carry out brief conversations can be inefficient and frustrating. Employees often mitigate these inefficiencies by writing emails that include conversational content in the title but no content in the body of the message. Although other conversation modalities such as short message service (SMS, MMS, etc.) and texting facilitate quick text based conversations, these modalities often have a high per unit cost and may not be compatible with all platforms and devices (e.g., desktops, laptops, tablets.) In many instances, SMS services and the like may only be supported by select devices and are generally incompatible with multiple platforms, operating systems and applications. Furthermore, many known message solutions are independent systems not integrated with email. For example, Apple iMessage provides an alternative method for combining SMS and IM, but this method can only be used on iOS devices or on a device executing an Apple operating system and is not compatible with non-Apple devices or operating systems. Similarly Research in Motion (RIM) BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) provides instant messaging, but only for RIM devices.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds