Instant Messaging


Let's review some of the new tools of the twenty-first century. Not everyone is using these tools, and a brief overview while highlighting their utility and importance in the connected world is worthwhile.

Instant messaging (IM) is a computer-based technology that enables you to send a quick message (typically short written text) to another computer running the same IM package. (As IM matures, the need to run the same IM package on all interconnected computers will disappear.) The IM software is typically loaded when your computer boots up and runs unobtrusively in the background, all the while advertising to everyone else within your IM group that you are online. A small panel insert on your screen presents you a list of all people in the IM group, often called your buddy list. The panel insert shows their online status (online and recently typing, online and not typing, or offline). People can be added to your buddy list at any time, and you can maintain several different listsperhaps one for Project A people, one for family and friends, and one for the soccer team. At a glance, you can tell who is online and whether they've been recently typing (which means they should be near their computer).

Some IM packages enable you to attach "objects" (files, music, pictures, databases, and so forth) to messages, and some even enable you to add a voice recording just by clicking the microphone button. IBM's new package, for example, is a reasonable attempt at blending e-mail, IM, and voicemail all into a single package. To send an IM, you just click the target's name, type a short message, and click Send. This action opens a chat window and starts a "chat" session. The chat window remains open, displaying a scrolling history of your conversation for as long as you keep the window open. Others can also be invited into a chat in progress. In fact, it is easy and common among younger users to have three or a half dozen people chatting in a single view.

As much fun as all this sounds (some teenagers find IM addictive), it is also an extremely practical business tool. Questions get answered in moments with IM. Receivers of messages now receive far fewer e-mails and feel less stressed. People lower in seniority ask questions of superiors with ease, and superiors go directly to subordinates for answers without worrying about chain of command. In short, problems get resolved far faster. IM has become the great leveler of corporate hierarchies.

IM

IM usage is soaring and has gone mainstream.[3] Although teens and young adults still dominate the landscape, usage in the workplace is rapidly growing. Some interesting statistics: 90 percent of teens and young adults use IM, 50 percent of age 55 and older use IM, and 50 percent to 70 percent in the middle age groups use IM. Nearly one-third of IM users use IM in and for work purposes. AOL states: "It is clear that instant messaging has gone mainstream." With more than 250 million regular users and 80 million messages sent per day, IM has established itself as a solid communication medium. An interesting change took place during the recent IM adoption years: always-connected computers. Prior to 2002, the vast majority of nonwork users were dial-up, and so e-mail was the proper asynchronous communication method. Post 2002, the rapid adoption of DSL and cable in the household meant computers were routinely tied (online) to the Internet and thus suitable for an interactive message.


[3] http://media.aoltimewarner.com/media/newmedia/cb_press_view.cfm?releae_num=55254160

Some believe that IM was the single biggest business productivity tool introduced in the past five years and that any company that is still using e-mail as their "fast communication" method is living in the dark ages. As mentioned in Chapter 4, "From Warfare to Government, Connectivity Is Vitality," IM has the ability to completely change command and control, and the effect is that problems are now resolved down-rank and accordingly much faster due to less waste of time. What started off looking like a trendy toy for bored teenagers (at least to us) has turned into a critical business application for many corporations.

Admittedly, we started off protesting against IM when it first made its way into the business world. Given the stress of multitasking, conference calls, and the nonstop barrage of e-mail, the last thing we needed was to be more reachable. As we watched the way others used IM, however, we asked ourselves whether we really wanted to be less reachable. If the boss is on a call at 8 P.M. with an irate customer of mine and needs immediate answers, do I want to be less reachable? If my teenager is about to get in a car with the "cool kids" to head into the City, and wants to check in with Dad to see whether it is okay, do I really want to be less reachable? What we really wanted was to be more efficiently reachablehence our discussion of the various attributes of communication mechanisms in the earlier chapters. IM provides a "quiet" and instantaneous method of reaching someone in a minimally invasive way.

Like so many technologies, IM had little utility until it became pervasive. Teenage users made IM pervasivenot the business community. The business world is far more bifurcated. We currently see reasonable penetration in the very large companies that span many offices and time zonesthose that mandate IM usage because of the efficiency it offers and the benefit from the reduced e-mail strain. Mandating IM usage makes it pervasive. You can count on reaching someone anywhere within the organization as long as that person is in front of a computer screen or PDA and using the tool. Some companies have even gone so far as to even eliminate office phones, relying on wireless Ethernet, IM, and cell service instead. This results in initial and continuing reduced monthly costs when building out a new office facilityfor those companies still building office facilities.

IM, and its cousin text messaging (E0 la cell phone), enable pervasive communication and exchange of data and informationcritical tools for the connected employees.



    Inescapable Data. Harnessing the Power of Convergence
    Inescapable Data: Harnessing the Power of Convergence (paperback)
    ISBN: 0137026730
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2005
    Pages: 159

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