AIM buddy statistics

June 5, 2007 4:17 PM

A while ago, there was a useful website that would provide online/offline statistics for all your AIM buddies, so you could see when they were on most frequently. It had interesting graphs it could make as well. Does anyone know if this or another similar web app is still around?
posted by nervestaple to computers & internet (7 comments total)

I don't know of such an application. What I can tell you is that Pidgin, formerly GAIM, includes the optional "Contact Availability Prediction" plugin. It provides response likelihoods based on time of day, activity, etc. I'm not sure that it'll be developed any further as it was a Google Summer of Code project.
posted by nilihm at 5:31 PM on June 5, 2007

The old site you might be thinking of is the creepily named IM Watching, which did pretty much what you describe. However, I haven't visited it in years, so I can't tell you if the fact that it's not responding right now is a temporary thing or whether it's been gone for a while. (Google has a cache of it from April of this year, though.)
posted by Johnny Assay at 7:13 PM on June 5, 2007

IM Watching is it! Any alternatives that don't require me to leave GAIM signed on?
posted by nervestaple at 8:01 PM on June 5, 2007

Looking further, IM Watching appears to be down for good. I downloaded pidgin, but I can't find the Contact Availability plugin anywhere!
posted by nervestaple at 8:41 PM on June 5, 2007

You can activate the plugin by checking off "Contact Availability Prediction" under Tools>Plugins (also accessible via ctrl-U). The plugin is fifth from the top when sorted in ascending alphabetical order.
posted by nilihm at 1:46 PM on June 6, 2007

nilihm: What OS, Pidgin version, etc.? I finally (yeah, I know) moved to Pidgin from gaim, and I can't find it either after looking through all of the plug-ins installed, so I'm starting to wonder if it may be OS dependent, or only in betas, or something. I also can't seem to find a downloadable version anywhere on the 'net, just references to it, and no plug-in section on the new Pidgin site....
posted by anaelith at 11:11 PM on June 10, 2007

Pidgin: 2.0.1
OS: Ubuntu 7.04
posted by nilihm at 3:21 PM on June 11, 2007