A system and method are provided for automating the implementing and use of presence information in a network and/or for automatically selecting the most efficient means for sending a message. In an embodiment of the system, presence information is transmitted to a presence server. The presence server then ascertains presence information for the entries in a user's network address book after a user's device provides presence information about the user to the presence server. This presence information can then used to determine whether a message is to be sent through session based messaging (if presence information indicates that a message recipient is available) or immediate messaging (if the other user is not available or no presence information is available). A system and method is also provided to automatically send the message using an efficient protocol.