I was in a chatty mood last evening when I got online. I scrolled down the chat list to choose who I'd like to talk to.

'Not at my desk'

'Bak home till 26th...yaaaay!!'

'Connected through BlackBerry®'

'losing the pride'

'Youth is a circumstance you can't do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old.'

'don't ping until you're dead or dying'

I pick the one with status message ' losing the pride' and chat for the next half hour, a school friend of mine. I always do that. Pick a person if I like the status message, discuss it if it's thought provoking or if it's an update of some sort, ask more questions about it etc. ( I was addicted to changing my status every now and then on Orkut until a few months back ). It is now one of the most popular features used on the Internet. It's there on instant messaging and e-mail services and it's a rage on social networking sites like Facebook ,Orkut, LinkedIn etc. There are also a host of sites which do this:-

http://www.awaymessages.com/
“AwayMessages.com has a huge categorized collection of cool and funny away messages (a.k.a. status messages) for Aim, Yahoo, MSN, Facebook, MySpace, and other IM/Social Networks that will keep you entertained for hours!”
http://www.allbestmessages.com/
“If you are looking for Facebook Status then your search ends here. You will find all the Facebook Status, facebook status messages... cute love facebook status text and funny facebook status sms related messages here.”
http://www.debbieohi.com/files/misc/creative-facebook-status.html
“Creative Facebook and Twitter Status Messages by Debbie Ridpath Ohi”

I also came across this amusing/scary article on ET's website. Amusing because I didn't really think 'Inappropriate status messages may land you in jail' and scary because the article revealed scary examples to back itself. Apparently they contribute to robberies and broken hearts. Also, they can be used as proof in court cases or even by your employers to decide whether you will fit your job profile or not.

It is a plane where people can post inquiries and advertise or promote their product or organization. In this way, status messages help in sifting through the deluge of information and get in touch with the right people. A survey shows that nearly 75% of 34514 myYearbook users are influenced by status messages when purchasing any product or commodity, to interactions magazine.