This “invisible mode” has left an unrecoverable wound in me. I can’t tell you the details of what happened and that’s not so important anymore. Because of this invisible mode, I did a small experiment I switched back to Windows, installed official MSN and pidgin, registered a testing msn account. I Launched official MSN and pidgin. The following I refer to msn as a user uses official msn, and pidgin as another user uses pidgin.

I set msn in invisible mode, and pidgin in available mode. Since pidgin can’t see msn (didn’t show offline contacts), I sent a message from msn to pidgin. It worked and both can have a conversation.

I closed msn’s conversation window, and tried to send a message from pidgin, I still can send messages; I closed pidgin’s conversation window, and found msn in offline contacts and send a message from pidgin, I still can, too.

I let msn log out and log in as invisible mode. I tried to send a message from pidgin. That’s it! I can’t send any message from pidgin if msn doesn’t send a message to pidgin first after msn has changed its status (invisible=>available=>invisible, logout=>login=>invisible, bad connection quality?).

Then I tried to send a new message from msn to pidgin. Magically, I can send a message from pidgin again. Both can have a conversation again.

I also know few interesting things from this small experiment. If you set invisible in pidgin, you can’t send any message. But if you block someone, you can send a message to that person, and that person can reply. If you block someone in msn, both can’t send or receive any messages.

If the connection is in bad quality, that may cause pidgin lost connection to msn (even temporarily) and think msn is really offline. They would not be able to keep talking if msn doesn’t send another message to pidgin..

Although I can’t change friend’s usage behavior of IM, but I can suspend my use of IM. To me, IM does not represent fast, quick or liable communications as before. A good communication is not only based on the speed of one successful message transmission. It should also concern the quality of the completeness of message from the sender. Unfortunately, text messaging doesn’t always reach an acceptable level. Yes, we do have voice communications. However, why we use it or not to use it, that is just another excuse to explain to someone else. Squabble often leads people to find excuses not the truth.

I wrote this post, because I don’t want to see other people suffer the same situation as I did. I did make mistakes in this, like very unfriendly asking for something. After I did the test, once it seemed to be solved, then I realized that I can’t pretend I can accept.