Exactly What Is Instant Messaging? Business Struggles to Define Instant Messaging

As instant messaging sweeps through the American workplace, employers, lawyers, compliance officers, and information technology professionals wrestle to define and manage it in light of myriad business, legal, and regulatory concerns.

Think of instant messaging as a combination of the telephone, which facilitates conversations with multiple people in real time, and of e-mail, which combines the speed of online communication with a written record of your conversation.

The hybrid nature of IM has created confusion among organizations that can’t decide whether to interpret IM traffic as e-mail or phone chat. Some organizations and industries prefer to think of IM chat as an extension of a casual telephone call—a conversation that ends when all parties hang up. Others define IM more formally as a type of e-mail—an electronic communication that produces a written record that may be discoverable in the course of an audit, an investigation, or a litigation.

When the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) in 2003 joined the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in announcing new IM retention regulations, the definition of instant messaging was clarified for broker-dealers, investment bankers, and those who choose to follow the lead of the financial services industry—arguably the earliest, most enthusiastic adopter of IM technology. Industry and government regulators helped the financial services industry clarify that, from the standpoint of content and retention, IM is a form of written correspondence that creates a written business record, just as e-mail does.

IM Rule # 1: Instant messaging is a form of e-mail—written correspondence that creates a written record.