Talking Without Speaking: the Pleasures and Perils of Instant Messaging
By Chris Hall, staff writer
Let’s face it, the honeymoon between you and your inbox is
over. Finished. As spam and e-mail-borne viruses comprise a staggering
70 percent of all e-mail traffic worldwide, it is clear that we
are all at our wit’s end. Arguably the first true “killer
app” of the Internet Age, e-mail today represents at best
a necessary evil and at worst a bona fide resource killer. As our
frustration with unsolicited e-mail has skyrocketed, our attention
span for reading legitimate e-mails has plummeted. As our fear of
opening e-mails from unknown sources has ballooned, our trust of
the broader Internet “community” has burst.
So what’s a conscientious e-communicator to do? As anyone
in this business can tell you, silence is not an option. While there
currently is no silver bullet to solve the growing e-mail problem,
one technology that provides an alternative is instant messaging
(IM). Once the exclusive domain of the chatty teenager and the bored
office worker, IM has matured to the point that a growing number
of companies are beginning to take notice. Something akin to “chat
on steroids,” some modern IM systems have blurred the line
between simple text messaging and full-featured online collaboration
tools, file delivery, white boarding, Webex-style broadcasts, remote
applications, voice and even video.
Pro and Con: IM vs. E-mail
Before you go out and send your e-mail programs to the digital
shredder, there are few things you should know about IM.
IM is realtime. Ironically this is both its blessing
and its curse. We all love the fact that IM allows quick back-and-forth
dialogue that more closely approximates a walkie-talkie than an
e-mail exchange. But anyone who has ever used IM has probably returned
to his or her desk after a long meeting to scores of “you
there?” IM messages from colleagues who have since disconnected.
While all the major IM services offered by the likes of Yahoo,
Microsoft and AOL have “I’m away from my desk”
and “do not disturb” features similar to those on voice-mail
systems, the truth is that nobody seems to use them. The result
is a long, unexpected silence for the person on the other end of
the line. With e-mail, there isn’t the expectation of an immediate
reply. While this might not be an issue for one-to-one or internal
communication, for firms experimenting with IM as a customer-service
tool, this can be worse than not having IM at all.
IM can transfer large files easily. To the IT
community that sets policy about such things, this is seen as one
of IM’s biggest strengths. The vast majority of corporate
e-mail servers have limits on how large an outgoing or incoming
attachment can be. Yet there are many times in the business world
that two people from different companies might need to transmit,
say, a large file containing camera-ready graphics that would choke
both the sender’s and the recipient’s e-mail servers.
The result is usually a great deal of frustration as the two parties
work with their respective IT departments to transfer the file.
In theory, IM allows for a direct conduit between sender and receiver,
bypassing any e-mail server restrictions.
IM currently seems best suited for internal communication
and/or small audiences. Any messaging platform that cannot
be guaranteed to reach a given external audience should be considered
as only an auxiliary external communication vehicle. The primary
problems with reaching a wider audience via IM are
- Security issues – IM has become fertile ground for a
new breed of viruses, and the IT community has responded by either
banning IM outright or by taking an “embrace and control”
strategy.
- Regulatory issues – While e-mail use can be easily logged,
archived and audited, IM generally presents a tougher challenge
in this area. The result is that many companies, particularly
those in the financial and government sectors, have banned the
use of IM until they can get a handle on this.
- User acceptance/training – We take for granted just how
long it took the average mortal to get comfortable with e-mail
in the first place. Any time you ask a user to install or configure
software, you are asking for a lot of people to be left out in
the cold. Presently, IM throws up just enough technical hurdles
to make it far less ubiquitous than e-mail.
- Standards, or lack of them – Like many nascent tech industries,
the IM world has seen a lot of divergence in regard to standards.
In other words, IM sender’s platform X might not work with
recipient’s platform Y, and vice versa. This situation will
get better, but more likely over the course of years, not months.
IM Outlook
Despite some interesting challenges, IM is a technology worth watching.
Although it is unlikely to replace e-mail anytime soon, numerous
industry reports have IM use growing at a much faster rate than
e-mail use in 2004 and beyond.
Resources
Business Use of IM
http://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=5494
IM vs. Chat
http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/public/article.php/3292941
IM Trends
http://www.dqindia.com/content/Trends/103053001.asp
IM investment ops (or lack thereof)
http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2004/mft04030218.htm?source=eptyholnk303100&logvisit=y&npu=y
The streetwise, smarmy and irreverent IM handbook
http://www.blacktable.com/imhandbook.htm
Excellent IM blog
http://johnporcaro.typepad.com/blog/2004/03/instant_messagi.html
Patricia Seybold Group’s IM Best Practices
http://www.psgroup.com/doc/products/2004/1/PSGP1-22-04CC/PSGP1-22-04CC.asp
Older but still relevant article on IM/Chat
http://steven.vorefamily.net/stories/2002/01/05/electronicMessaging.html
“Spim”: IM spam
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/03/29/HNimspamtriple_1.html
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