Instant Messenger Use Grows in the Workplace

"The easier it is to communicate, the faster change happens." - James Burke I just read an article in my Web Pro News newsletter about the growing popularity of Instant Messenger use in the office. The article pulls data from the third annual AOL Instant Messenger Trends Survey, which reports an overall 19% increase in IM usage year after year. Of those surveyed about IM use in the workplace: 1. 58% use IM to ask coworkers questions. 2. 29% use IM to interact with clients. 3. 12% have used IM to avoid difficult face-to-face conversations ( I don't know if this is such a good idea). 4. 38% claim to use IM more than their email. So why has instant messaging steadily become more popular? Probably the same reason why email caught on; IM's are a fast, effective way to ask a question and avoid the ho-hum of waiting for the phone to ring, going through office extension lists, waiting for operators to transfer the call and the usual chit-chat that must exist before business can be done. An email or IM is expected to be direct, a direct phone conversation is a risk as directness could be interpreted as rudeness. While email does all of these things mentioned above, IM provides quicker results. An IM receiver immediately sees the question appear on his/her screen, thus feeling more inclined to answer it, or at least respond with something letting the sender know when they can get to it. With an emailed message, the receiver may have a notification system so they are alerted when a new message arrives, but an immediate response to it is less likely. IM is a tad more intruding, but it gets the job done, and in competitive fast-paced markets (such as ours) this seems to be increasingly necessary. Although instant messaging seems to be replacing email for many, the same questionable concerns of email exist; such as privacy, a disconnection between employer and employee, the reliance of email and instant messaging to do things that should be done in-person (such as difficult confrontations) and the issue of inappropriate usage of instant messaging (crudeness, sexually explicative language, gossiping, etc.) and how to monitor it. Instant messaging provides several features to make it more personable and enjoyable. Surveyees returned the following results for top IM features: 1. 39% for personalization capabilities (wallpapers, buddy icons, audibles). 2. 34% for away messages feature (my favorite). 3. 34% for photo sharing. 4. 29% for file sharing. 5. 28% for the invisibility feature. Whether or not IM will overtake email as a top form of exchange in the workplace is questionable. Although there are many perks to instant messaging - mainly, faster communication - there still seems to exist a higher level of privacy and professionalism with email. View the full survey. Read the Web Pro News article. Extra: There are 300 million IM users across the world, 80 million coming from North America. Below is a list of the US cities with the highest IM usage rates. 1. Miami, FL 2. New York , NY 3. Boston, MA 4. Chicago, IL 5. Atlanta, GA 6. Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex, TX 7. Detroit, MI 8. San Francisco, CA 9. Sacramento, CA 10. Tampa, FL