Other Chat Networks
iMessages is all well and good. But astonishing though it may be to believe, not everyone on earth uses Macs and iPhones.
Chatting with people using other computers and phones isn’t quite as rewarding as using iMessages, but the essentials are still in place. Chats over Yahoo, AIM, Google Talk, or Jabber networks still scroll up the screen like a screenplay.
The Buddies List
For Yahoo, AIM, Google Talk, or Jabber chats, the Messages app offers a traditional chat-program buddies list. It’s like an address book whose names appear only in Messages—for people you don’t need cluttering up your main Contacts list (Figure 20-8).
It’s a unified buddies list, too. It houses the chat “addresses” for all your chat partners from all the different chat services, in a single list.
A tiny icon appears next to each name in your list, indicating that person’s availability to chat—and what kinds of multimedia chats are available. A 
icon means “equipped for an audio chat”; a 
means “equipped for a video chat.” The little colored dots mean “available” (green), “away” (red), “idle” (orange), and “undetermined—probably on a cellphone” (gray). A little 
icon means you’re chatting with someone ...
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