User-presence refers to the communication status of a participating user in a communication system such as Instant Messaging (IM).
Description
Presence is a piece of status information containing an availability state. It indicates the willingness of a potential communication entity to participate in a chat communication.
Common Uses
The following list includes, but not limited to the common user presences.
- Online
- Available to chat
- Busy
- Do not disturb
- Away
- Offline
In current standards, there are a richer choice in presence attributes such as user's mood, emotion and location.
Privacy
Presence is a sensitive information when it comes down user privacy. Thus, in most cases, a communication system would draw limits to whom a user's presence may be revealed to.
Standard
Presence is widely used in Instant Messaging (IM). The most popular standard protocol for presence is XMPP, short for eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol. To read more about XMPP's internet standards, visit http://xmpp.org/rfcs/rfc3921.html.