Instant messenging has its roots in BBSes, military, AOL and IRC. Now you can use Hi Yahoo!, AIM, eBuddy, Meebo, Nimbuzz, or Fring on your Droid and Beejive, Yahoo!, AIM, Palringo, Skype, Fuze and more on your iPhone. Which brings us to … the theatre of the Internet… Very few men who have used the Internet for a long enough period of time can honestly say they have never pretended to be a woman while online. Why do they do this?

Curiosity? Like what is is like to be a woman? Maybe you think that women can get away with things that men can’t. Maybe you want to “be a woman” in a way that you know men want women to be … online? Do you really wish you were a woman? If yes, why? Do you want to see how people react to women as opposed to men? Do you do it to find out the secrets of other men or other women you know? And why would you do that?

Perhaps if you befriend another woman in a female facade, you will learn more about what women are like? Maybe you think they hide who, how, what, and why they are the way they are? And you may get one epiphany after another when pretending to be one? Is it roleplay? Research?

Do you want to cartoonize women and act in ways that are exaggeratedly like the stereotypes? Make everyone and yourself ROTFL… Are there bad motives? Good motives? What are they?

Being online and anonymous gives you the freedom to do, be, and say anything you want. Think about some of the things you’ve said to people online. Would you speak that way in real life? Maybe in your case the answer is yes, but many people use their newfound freedom to act in a manner that they wouldn’t dare in real life. Is this bad or good or in between?

One anonymous contributor to a Techistan survey on this topic said, “It’s not a new phenonemon. Long before the Internet came to be known to the general public, there were systems called BBSes, which rather acted like web forums that you find now on the Internet. The big difference being that a BBS was run on a computer by a hobbyist, and you had to call that computer directly from yours, and usualy only one person could be on a particular BBS at a time.

That was back in the 1980s, and I was rather active in that culture at the time. It became well known that there were some “female” personalities on the BBSes that were really men. I coined the term “Televestite” to describe such.

I would imagine that for man who is into such a thing, it’s probably a lot easier to hide behind the anonymity and safety of an Internet persona, and pretend to be a woman, than to dress up in womens’ clothing and go out in public that way.”

Another set of ideas from the Internet, “I also coined the term “televestite” on Compucations BBS in 1985. The sysop now runs a website in Big Bear. I used to use chat rooms on AOL and “men” (ßeta males) would very often piss off other men because they were hiding behind a monitor screen. There was a punk named “BchLivin27″ who in Summer of 1996 who, together with a bimbo named “Discobroad” were taunting me.

She since then left AOL and because I remembered his and her screen name, I assumed her screen name and let him think I was her. I tricked him into giving HIS phone number and address to me. I never acted on it.

The Germans in WW2 used female spies because male allies would easily have given up information to them, in fact much more easily than they would under torture. So, I used this same tactic against Brad because this “man” (a ßeta male pretending to be an alpha male)

Men on AOL chat rooms in the 1990′s were so desperate to be “with a woman” that they would tell a woman anything just to get her to talk back. I actually talked to a guy at an AOL function at Foxfire in Anaheim Hills who had used the same tactic against another ßeta male. He then broadcast his phone number in the chat room.

So to sum it up: Men might use televestitism as an interrogation tactic?”

A third, “I have no idea. To me, lying online is the same as lying face to face.”

Another says, “Looks and gender do matter. Being a hot female ENHANCES all your other qualities. Take Beyonce for example. She can dance, and she can sing. But would it be the same if she was a hairy old man? Those who say gender and looks don’t matter don’t realize they’re prejudice at all.

It’s a harsh reality, we as human beings are shallow.”

A final one says, “So, many men (or boys) pretend to be women (or girls) in order to have more people talk to them. They feel like they can open up; whereas, society, in general, makes me think they have to be solid and silent. That can be a little lonely. I mean, people do it online for the same reasons they do it offline.”

What do you think?

Gigaom Blog quote: “But do we really need the option of sharing on so many random services? What if those sharing widgets had a bit of intelligence about what a certain user already prefers, and just showed her the options she’s likely to use?”

Meebo has created a consortium, along with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, JanRain, Diquis, Gigya, and MySpace to encourage an open social standard called XAuth that enables a variety sites that opt in to connect with users. XAuth will be available under the Open Identity Exchange or the OpenID Foundation.

It appears that the tool will detect if a user has logged into any service or not in the recent past. As a result,  when the user does login, a display will show the user the social networks and communications sites that he or she logs in to most often to encourage the user to do so more.

Have you noticed the Meebo Bar at the bottom of hundreds of websites? You can even download the Meebo app for Droid.

Meebo is not the only service that provides such a toolbar or will be. Facebook plans to launch its own soon which could be as soon as during the f8 developer conference in San Francisco. And, about two years ago, James Mowery shared what he believed were among the top 23 best social networking toolbars and plugins for Firefox: del.icio.us, digg, Fleck, Facebook, kaboodle, Linkedin, LiVEJOURNAL, myspace.com, newsvine, NowPublic, orkut, RatePoint, Simpy, SQUIDOO, StumbleUpon, twitter, Technorati, Skype, YouTube, Wikipedia and Mashable Jobs.

But do users want to have any one source to have so much power over what, when, where, why, and how they use the Internet? Even if there are privacy restriction and white-listing intact, what does that mena? Take a look at the recent announcement that the U.S.A. Library of Congress will archive all Tweets since the first day of 2006.

Take note that Meebo is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm. Check the rest of True Ventures’ portfolio at http://www.trueventures.com/portfolio/.

Read more at http://pro.gigaom.com/2010/04/meebo-uses-xauth-to-try-and-block-facebook/#ixzz0ljvTAWeu.