GigaOM Pro

There’s a flurry of instant messaging and chat announcements today. Cisco has polished its open IM service, Jabber, and is positioning it as a unified communications manager. GroupMe, the group texting service, is pushing towards smartphone chat away from SMS, adding photo sharing and integrating location-based services. And Marc Andreessen’s white-label social networking platform Ning is launching a mobile chat app – not related to its other services – that adds some gaming and gifting elements. What’s in the air? (Other than the fact that the SXSW entertainment conference where Foursquare practically made its name starts next week.) Regular readers know I like to obsess about presence management – how a unified presence manager would make apps and networks “stickier” and potentially lock in customers.