First, almost every lamer I know uses an instant messenger. The second reason I'm now more interested in these God awful things is because of Jabber. They're also writing Jabber clients for Windows and Linux. It's interesting to note that their message transport is XML-based which means you could easily tie your own applications to a Jabber server. These developments are going to make things exciting me thinks.
Interaction is key here.
So if you're already bored with my rhetoric, let me give you a summary of what we're going to do. We're going to start by hacking a script that initiates conversations with AIM users, then we'll implement an Eliza AIM chatter-bot. Finally, we'll learn how to write a Perl plugin for Gaim that uses Festival to synthesize incoming messages from other users. If that doesn't knock your socks off, I'm going home.