Sorry - just realized that you were just quoting the Science Daily article and they were not your own words.

rookcnu

Jason - just a heads up that those folks that graduated from the "Buckeye" school sometimes get real testy when people call their school just Ohio State University. They like it to be called The Ohio State University. "The" for some reason makes it more important, I guess.

Just an FYI that some of your readers might say something if they have their undies in a wad.

rookcnu

I just think it's so much more convenient than email. I leave my AIM on as much as I can and encourage people to IM me instead of email me.

For someone who's at their computer most of the day, it's as handy as text messaging. It's a means of staying available to anyone with the brains to create an account, and with tools like meebome and buddy pounces from pidgin, communication is made easier for everyone.

People use Instant Messaging to procrastinate and be unproductive, but that's not all it's there for. I feel like instant messages are encouraged to be short and sweet. This means they also have to be to the point. You can answer the question as briefly as you want, meaning this technology can be perfect for productivity.

Busybyeski

Luckily I'm able to run IM. Honestly, if they didn't let me check LH/Kot/Con and give me the occasional IM to friends and families I'd be lost.

It's hard working in an office where 95% of the people are 20+ years older and have nothing in common with you. ~_~

battra92

In this world of the mobile office, alternative work schedules, remote/distance workplaces, IM is absolutely amazing tool. However it has a huge potential to be a time sink.

In my experience, you have to have an enormous amount of online discipline in order for IM to be successful in the work environment. In a corporate setting, an official policy on ettiquette and/or official use policy may be required to protect people's time (and job -- I've seen co-workers fired b/c of IM-related issues - not responding to "important" IMs, too much IM'ing, etc.)

I can't stress enough that you can have too many conversations at the same time. "quick question" is quaint phrase when YOU are trying to get answer to something. It's a different story when you are on the receiving end and there are 10-15 "quick questions" on your screen. -- and to be honest a lot of people don't really care that you are away "I'll just leave him a IM on his screen and he can answer it when he gets back" Nothing like spending 2 hours of your day answering IMs instead of doing your work (unless of course, you job is to maintain the IM Help desk.) Yes, yes, there are ways of handling all these situations - but that goes back to the strong online discipline - and not everyone will have that.

Bodybybuddha

I run an IM client at work. Constantly. In fact, most of my office does. While some have dedicated "work" accounts, many don't. It's just a way to keep in touch with friends and family. Constant IM conversation, albeit in bursts, makes the day pass more quickly. It's also a great way to send links, information, and quick questions across the office.

...I wonder what an IRC server would do for companies of various sizes.

EchoD

IM is a great way to get my co-workers attention when their headphones are on, or to find out if my boss is available without walking all the way down the hall only to find out he's on the phone.

saffyre9

I agree with all the other comments. IMing, in my experience, can be handled quicker than texting. The added bonus is that you don't have to "detach" from your computer to do it. I talk(and listen) on the phone for the majority of my job and if one has a silent keyboard, one can do a lot of IMing during an otherwise mind numbing phone call.

physik

My previous employer introduced IM several years ago and it was a huge success. The company was a very large, global corporation and the obvious benefit (and main driver for rollout) was reduced long distance and international calling. Particularly for quick conversations that needed a more immediate response than email. However, it ended up being a great method of conversing with minimal disruption for even those employees within the same location. Another hidden benefit was the ability to reach those that were stuck in meetings where other forms of communication were not possible. Yet another plus was the ability to log converstions. Great for remembering those tricky CLI command parameters or for CYA.

cacack

Unfortunately, the study doesn't take into account the constant attention drain that is IM. Take a look at most of the responses above: it allows them to communicate with friends & family, chat during a mind numbing phone call, people can ask "quick questions" that enables them not to get in the habit of finding out things for themselves and wasting other (presumably more knowledgable) people's time.

All of this lines up exactly with my experience. Yes, there are work environments where IM can be useful - like when it is part of the work, say in a online customer service space, but these are few. Everywhere else it takes focus away from doing work, and the minutes it saves you from walking down the hall to see if someone is available is taken away by the hours spent monitoring it and wasting your time on low value work - such as answering "quick questions". Avoid it, if you can.

P.S. Email is more disruptive than IM? Since when? It's only disruptive when you use it like IM, which illustrates the problem in this analysis.

srjenkins

We use IM a lot to exchange and share text, code snippets, shell commands, and the like. As System Admins, it certainly beats any other form of exchange for such text.

ntheother

At my new workplace, I'd say about 50-60% of work gets done by internal chat. Most of rest via email and _very_ little via meetings.

R

rjamya

"can be a productivity booster-if used efficiently." That last caveat is a pretty big one, it's not a phone and e-mail replacement rolled into one which a lot of people seem to use it for. It's taken a few years for my company to develop a good internal sense of when to use it and when it gets in the way.

aduryea

It's all about whom you chat with during work. Coworkers? Productive. Friends? Not usually productive.

cavalierex

I use it all the time! Would be better if more of my colleagues did too!

Blogged here: [tinyurl.com]

robthegeek

At my work, we use IM to transfer project files quickly and easily. Just drag and drop and I can start working on that PSD!

Even though we sit a few feet from each other, sometimes it's just easier to type a quick question (for example, if I need a link or an address or something that should be typed). Then for further clarification we talk, haha.

SubKamran

Well actually in my company we use Skype, most of the work with india and Bolivia is done trough it. We share desktops using yugma, make skype calls almost everything. We do not have meetings at all, maybe one or two. I would say that most of the work is done using skype and emails.

ChambrasWeed

IM at the work place is a blessing and a curse.

As a programmer, it's a great way for me to ping a colleague for a quick answer, just like this article suggests. "Hey Bob, how does your .getData(blah) method get the data from the database again?" Quick answer from Bob, done. Awesome.

But at the same time, it also creates a venue for interruptions, exactly opposite of what the article suggests. Previously, Bob would be able to concentrate on developing code, and I will wait for the afternoon team meeting or whatever to ask him the question. Now, with IM available at work, Bob is getting questions from developers like me at random times of the day, and he feels obliged to answer them within minutes, thus he is constantly being interrupted throughout the day and cannot concentrate on his programming.

ww2db.com

IM also has other advantages since IM archival takes considerable less storage than emails. For certain type of organizations this can translate into millions of $ over years.

R

rjamya

Skype is the only messaging app not filtered by our school district, so that's what I use during the day (it took some prodding to get the other teachers using it). It really does cut down on the "wasteful" emails. My general rule of thumb is, if you expect a one or two work reply, send an IM instead of an email. If you need an explanation or longer answer, and having it in writing is better, use email. (I also think email works better when there are multiple recipients). All disruptive tech (email, IM, texting, phones) have their place. It's our job to use them "the right way".

rorowe

My workplace is fairly lenient about IM; no restrictions on talking to friends and family, just don't let it get out of hand. And it's really handy for sending your colleague a code snippet or URL.

Robert J. Walker

I'm running an XMPP (formerly Jabber) server on the LAN here at work, so far its been a boon to productivity.

I'm seriously considering moving the XMPP server to our web server so our reps in the field can use it too.

Zundfolge

@Robert J. Walker: My employer had a similar policy. They turned their head when they noticed an IM client on people's machines and, of the people I knew, most had a handful of contacts - mostly work with one or two outside. I'd limited my list to people I worked closely with and my other half.

Then, some moron tried to send 3gig of pictures to a buddy outside the company and choked our firewall. Within 24hrs the netadmin's bot-monkeys had removed all clients.

BUT, they said, we've installed the Lotus Notes IM client instead. (You may know Notes - well, it's that virus we use to read out mail where I work.) The notes client was work only - not even external clients can get on it. Oh, and, instead of 6-10 people who could IM me I now have close to 1000 people who can see I'm at my desk and IM me. The first four messages I got were:

a) I can FINALLY IM you instead of calling, sweet
b) Where are you going for lunch?
c) You going for a beer after work?
d) Are you there?

all from people who weren't on my original list. I logged out of IM and changed my pref to "don't login to IM automatically". The next morning it was reset and I was online. I repeated this process for weeks until a helpdesk person phoned me to find out what I was doing - apparently signing into IM was good enough for the prez so it's good enough for me. Now I just change it to "I am away" each morning.

I also long for the day I find one of the 4 people above away from their desks: "Hey Prez, wanna go for a beer after work?"

Jim (The Canuck One)

As a student who doesn't work in an office (or a cube), I often use IM when studying. Quick questions to my classmate can help me to speed up my studying, and answering questions only helps me remember stuff.

So yeah, it can be a real productivity booster.

Yab

@Jim the Canuk. I feel your pain.

Unfortunately, this article assumes appropriate IM use by your colleagues. People used to IM me mostly to chat about non-work stuff. Our away message is "editedable" so for a while I used "Working - IM me for work related only" but either didn't see it or ignored it. With the Lotus notes client, I am able to restrict who can see me on IM. I have about 20 people on there, half of which have never IMed me anyway, but it is important to be available to them should they have a question.

With people who also manage it correctly, IM can be a productivity booster.

MiddleGeek

@cavalierex: You've got that right.

I use IM at work both for chatting with friends and for quick questions to my boss and coworkers (asking who's in charge of something or other, sending links, etc.). the former can suck up the productive hours of my day, but the latter can save me a lot of wasted time and effort.

By the way, standard procedure in our office is to have a YIM client up whenever you're at your desk (My boss is surprised when she has to drop by to ask me a question in person because I forgot to open it). It's your own concern whether or not you use it productively.

In the end, I think it's a wash.

mDuo13

At my last job we were given a microsoft version of the work related messenger client. Fortunately no-one really liked me at my last job and I got lots of internet surfing done :-> Before you ask, I didn't get fired, I found my current job with better pay and quit. I still surf the web a lot, but I wish I had more work to do, too much surfing strains my poor eyes 8-.

xenobyte72

My work has been using AIM since I started last August. I really don't use it at all other than sending a link every now and again to the guy that sits next to me. I usually do see people with about 12 IM's going at once because it's much easier to send ticket info (we're a chain of scrap yards) over IM than it is to email it to them.

wrestlingnrj

Being too available via IM/chat has caused far more interruptions for me. Email has less temporal pressure to "reply in a few seconds", so it's somewhat different.

Torley

I work as a Tier I tech having to work in conjunction with 3 NOCs nationwide and a number of field techs around the country, having a IM client helps a huge amount. we can share info quickly and keep each other informed without having to use the blasted phone. The downside, our IT dept demands we use MS communicator, big brother watching us work.

dingo4ever

IM has become the new Excel, overused and misused because a company is failing to provide its employees with the right tools. IRC has been around for ages and works loads better than IM ever will. The learning curve for IRC may be a little too steep for some, but the benefits IRC provides(channels, community, private messaging, SEARCHABLE LOGS, file transfer, etc) are astounding. E-mail is essentially OFFLINE communication, but everyday we use it for things we want responses to as soon as possible. Once a question gets answered in an e-mail it is just a matter of time until someone spams the entire office with the same question and everyone gets spammed the same answer which they do not read. For the life me, I cannot understand why organizations do not see how communities on the internet have self-organized and take a cue from all of the amazingly simple tools we all use for communication outside the office.

E-mail is usually unnecessary. A forum with RSS feeds is probably a better choice for most messages.
Most IMs can be shared in a public channel for the benefit of everyone else.

IRC + Forums = Community and Knowledge Base
E-mail = Silos

scudco

I have exactly the opposite impression of IM. While it can be a nice tool in the office place it is often abused by people who seem to think IM is another form of Google. So yes, it's a time saver for those who have random questions but it's a time sink for those who are on the receiving end of those questions.

In my experience people seldom, if ever, respect your status. I go days at a time without logging in and when I do I have several chat windows consisting of:

Hey, you there?
Hello?
Are you there?

My other pet peeve with this is when someone sends you an IM and you tell them that you're in a meeting and can't chat now. My guesstimate is that 50% of people will still continue chatting. Your status is of absolutely no importance to them.

I also see it abused by sneaky co-workers who try to take conversations to IM in order not to have a paper trail. For instance one software developer in particular is famous for asking to make changes to a spec over IM. When you finally come to an agreement via IM he sends out a confirm email with a very distorted account of what was said in IM. So now I log all chats and cut and paste the chat into the email thread so others can see how we arrived at the decision. Not surprisingly it has come out that he often has lied or distorted facts which others object to once they are able to see the entire conversation.

My golden rule for IM in the workplace is that it should only be used when immediacy is of the utmost importance. It shouldn't be used when an email would accomplish the same goal. If you have a question that needs addressed immediately then use IM. If it can wait an hour or two then send an email.

BillyBangkok