To-Done! Working to live.

Stephen Caver on November 3, 2005 said:

Being a student I haven’t yet used IM in a professional environment, and I can see that it may have complications. However, I can tell you that I usually have many conversations when I’m online and I can never get any work done when I’m talking to friends on IM. Because of this I never have it on when I’m working on a project that’s important.

Daniel Nicolas on November 3, 2005 said:

Let’s see. Daily, I think I have about 10 to 15 conversations during 9 to 2, then about 20 or 30 after friends get out of school (2 to 6) and then probably anywhere from 20 to 50 conversations from 6 to 11. I’d say about 50 conversations a day, average.

So I’d say I use instant messaging more than a landline or a cellphone as for a means of communitication. Business, arranging plans for whatever, talking to friend and family – it’s almost all through instant messaging.

However, having multiple clients open sucks. Not having the official client means that you can’t take advantage of all the features. But there is no interoperability between the instant messaging networks (at least the big ones) and everyone seems to be on the different networks. I’ve got alot of people to switch over to Google Talk, but they still use MSN and Yahoo as well because that is where their contacts are.

brian w. on November 3, 2005 said:

Two of my coworkers are offsite, and we use IM to keep up with work stuff. Often it’s just asking a question about a specific project. On the other hand we chat about everything from the weather to technology. I also chat with a few other friends throughout the day about whatever happens to come up. I usually have two or three windows open at a time.

Jeff Smith on November 3, 2005 said:

The only time I find myself using IM during my workday here at the office is to exchange files with co-workers.

Any trivial conversations usually wait until after work when I have the time, for the most part.

John Hritz on November 3, 2005 said:

I try to limit same time, different place communications methods. I like email as a method to keep up with friends until we have a plan underway then I usually switch to phone. I rarely text message, but I’ve been adopting the japanese habit of text’ing first before making personal calls during work hours. I like to avoid interruptions during the work day, so I try to keep that in mind for others. When I’m off, I’m usually not at a computer, so IM doesn’t generally reach me.

Jeff on November 3, 2005 said:

Several conversations daily. Coworkers, family, and friends.

Work-related ones are not trivial, they’re work-related and pointed.

Family and friends: Casual conversation (not “trivial”), just as if we’d taken a short stroll together away from other people and distractions.

Chris Bailey on November 3, 2005 said:

For the last year or so, my IM use has been about 99% work related, and done on the company I work for’s internal Jabber network. We make extensive use of IM, in part because our teams is dispersed across three or more locations (I work on a couple teams). It is thus nearly all work discussion, occasionally something fun. IM for non-work purposes for me is incredibly rare, email still rules that world for me.

Skip on November 3, 2005 said:

I rarely, if ever, use IM. This is primarily because the time I spend at the computer is at work and IM isn’t used at work, so the only contacts I would talk to would be personal. Plus, when I do use IM the conversations were usually too much of a distraction and I can’t stay in “flow”.

At home, I don’t IM because my contacts aren’t usually online at the same time and, frankly speaking, there are just more important things that need doing, even on the computer.

Britt Parrott on November 3, 2005 said:

I only use IM when I have a particular need for it, usually related to a specific task. I do not use it for informal discussions or chatting. I make sure I have a specific need when I open an IM client and usually set up a time to have an IM session in advance when I need to use it.

I rarely have my IM client open.

Fraser on November 3, 2005 said:

I’ve found the IM is a total black hole of time. If you want to be productive in any way, you need to turn it off. If don’t want to be productive, keep it running, feel free to let it interrupt your work and flow of thoughts.

Sara White on November 3, 2005 said:

I’m a student, so I only sign onto IM when I’m not studying or working on a paper, because I know that once I do, I’ll be swamped with messages. Usually I have around 3 to 5 conversations going at once, but any more than that and I find that I can’t concentrate enough on each conversation.

I generally talk to friends (both people that know in real life or those that I’ve met online)or classmates, almost never family members (they’re too computer-illiterate). If someone messages me that I just don’t want to talk to at that time, I’ll just ignore them. And if they annoy me too much, I’ll block them.

Most of the conversations aren’t exactly trivial, but they’re not really deep either. Mostly they’re similar to a conversation I’d have if a friend phoned me up to talk about their day.

Michelle on November 3, 2005 said:

I, too, think of IM as a massive time chewing machine!

I was once highly addicted to the immediate social benefits it provided and I spent countless HOURS engrossed in written conversations on it. Hey! It was a new toy at the time.

But once people wanted to start b!tchin’ in new screens while still maintaining the original “nicey-nicey” conversation I lost a lot of interest. Besides, I could never handle anymore than two IM’s at once and I couldn’t do anything else while I was on it so as far as productivity goes – it’s a definite no-no.

There’s still a lot to be said for the good old fashioned telephone. You can “hear” things inside voices and behind spoken words that transcend text everytime.

Email is marginally better than IM but only when it’s relevant.

My house and my family will be forever grateful that I gave up IM :D

Now… if I can just get my 13yo daughter weaned off it! :(

Troy G on November 3, 2005 said:

I have used IM since the first release of ICQ back in the mid-90’s. Short, casual, and unofficial is the words that come to mind when I want to use IM. I use it so much at work that the company has taken my lead and started teaching all employees to use it as another form of interoffice communication. After using it office for a couple of months now, I have coworkers IMing me that I didn’t even know they could turn on a computer let alone use IM. As a whole the company sees it as another communication tool that is free and usable in our digital workplace.

Sarah B on November 3, 2005 said:

I pretty much only use IM to communicate with my husband while he is at work. He is on the phone almost all of the day so I can’t ever get him on the phone, but he’s on the computer all day too and always has his IM open. We discuss plans for the day, family life send important messages to each other. He can’t message much so it’s usually pretty limited.

Michael Grant on November 3, 2005 said:

To me IM has all the disadvantages of the telephone (it’s interruptive) with none of the advantages (doesn’t convey nonverbal cues like tone of voice), while also lacking the advantages of e-mail (you can’t take your time to compose your replies). I avoid IM as much as possible.

What I have been using a lot lately is Skype….

sean on November 3, 2005 said:

Started with ICQ back in mid-90’s. Went through a period where I wasted much time with it, however I now use it to get instant answers to project questions. It is more insistant than an email, and I like the ability to clarify in real time.

I use it constantly.

Jeffrey Cox on November 3, 2005 said:

For me, IM is on all the time and I have 5 – 10 conversations per day. Right now I have to say that it is a real time waster. But, I have hopes for the future.

Today was a good example. Every time I tried to get started into the “important” projects, someone popped up and IM’ed me. They are good friends and were just “saying hi” to check in with me. I love chatting with them. But, when I was done, a significant amount of time had lapsed and even though I got “smidgens” of work in here and there that significant amount of time did not get spent on the “important.”

I’m starting to work with developers and team members across the country and around the world. I have hopes that IM will be key to staying in touch with all of these people and keeping things moving forward. We shall see – maybe they to will just pop up and “say hi!” ;-)

Chris Hansen on November 3, 2005 said:

I use IM throughout the day and night for both personal and business uses.

Personal:

I chat with friends and family throughout the day and night when I’m online, which is rather constant. Mostly mundane stuff.

Work:

Our offices are spread out from New York to California with engineering outsourcing to Hong Kong and Shanghai. I use IM to keep in contact with engineers in different offices, especially when debugging common applications. I use IM to confer with the engineers in China, especially since their English verbal skills are not great but their written English skills probably outrank half of the high school students I know.

I use GAIM as my IM client which supports MSN, Yahoo!, AOL, ICQ and Google Talk (or any Jabber account). It is so blasted stable compared to Trillian or Miranda IM and works fast. It uses more memory than Miranda (but far less buggy) and less than Trillian (and much, MUCH faster than Trillian).

Chris Hansen on November 3, 2005 said:

Oh, one more point – I use IM to have conversations during development that sometimes last for hours. The phone just doesn’t do it – I’d be making constant phone calls and email just isn’t designed to be a conversational tool. I have a ready history of conversations (something you can’t do with a phone) and I don’t have to wait for 10 minutes for an email and reply to propagate through the networks.

Paul on November 3, 2005 said:

I was actually introduced to IM through work back in the early 90’s. Since then, I have used it daily at work only. Maybe it’s because I worked on team based projects (video games), but I find it a nice inbetween of the passive nature of email and the intrusive nature of phone calls. Those people that find it distracting usually don’t understand the ability to set “away” status if they’re really into what they’re doing. I also appreciate Yahoo and ICQ’s ability to send offline messages. Now I use it 95% to keep in touch with my former coworkers and quickly send URL’s and code snippets.

Rob Z. on November 3, 2005 said:

I’d probably like IM more if folks used it for something other than just yapping. I’ve been using it in one for or another since 1997, and I only really use it these days if there’s a truly compelling reason. The only reason I use IM right now is because my wife likes to keep in touch with me during the day, but even most of that is idle chatter that often pulls me away from what I’m focusing on.

IM is perfectly ideal for quick “pings”. If I have a quick question or want to confirm something with tomeone, I like being able to just shoot off a quickie IM and get back a quickie answer. Conversations, however, are a bear.

See, most folks have IM lurking in the background and will chat in between other things. So, if someone starts a conversation, inevitably someone will walk away for a few minutes, creating almost unbearable lulls and breaks in the conversation. It requires me to shift gears quite a bit, which leaves my focus on any one thing rather weak. I find that putting up the “Busy” sign doesn’t always help – many folks figure that, while you may be busy, you’re not too busy for them. When you try to explain otherwise, some folks are less than understanding.

Limiting IM to just my wife and a small, select group of folks has helped considerably. But for anything more than a quick info session, I prefer a phone call – it’s more efficient, it’s WAY more personal, it conveys far more information (many emotions – especially sarcasm – are notoriously difficult to convey in IM, no matter how many smileys you have) and gets you a lot further.

Herme Garcia on November 3, 2005 said:

our company has sales network in many countries and we use mainly IM to talk, because is easier than voice when talk in english with non-english people, and it’s really better to send numbers, URLs, files, names, phones, data, etc.

Other advantage is that you can leave and return later (even an hour) without get the other people mad on you.

We also talk a lot between coworkers, even if it’s close to me, this conversations are normally really quick and left open.

For not to be interrupted, I normally have all the non-coworker contacts blocked, so they doesn’t know if I am online. I open them for talk on demand, normally setted by email, SMS or phone call. After the conversation, block them again.

I normally never have more than one conversation at a time (maybe a quick question-response from a coworker) because it’s easy to chat for hours with a person if you don’t concentrate and transmit valuable information, too many “yes”, “ok”, “agree” and short lines.

If more than one requires to chat at the same time, I set a line!

That’s all I can remember, I hope is of interest for you!

Allison on November 3, 2005 said:

I use IM everyday at work (Sametime) and depend on it. Most of my coworkers are in other countries, so it’s easier and cheaper to ping them throughout the day rather than picking up the phone. On a typical day, I probably have conversations with 6-10 people. With my team members, conversations last throughout the day, off and on. With the others, they usually last 5-10 minutes and are done.

I rarely sign on to Yahoo/MSN/AOL anymore for personal IM’ing. Lately, I prefer email instead because I don’t find it easy to wrap up a personal conversation on IM.

Harmony on November 3, 2005 said:

I used to use IM (ICQ) years ago, but gave it up because the constant distraction of incoming messages combined with the pavlov’s dog effect of waiting for the next message was just too disruptive to whatever else I was doing at the time. I think the technology is great, but not for me.

Brian on November 3, 2005 said:

Im in in IM’s all day long. I work remote so it is an easy way to get information quickly when I need to without calling, leaving a message possibly etc. I can send the IM and get a response quickly.

I also use IM’s with friends throughout the day.

Keith on November 3, 2005 said:

Thanks to everyone who’s chimed in so far. It’s very interesting to see how you all use IM and to hear your experiences. Keep them coming.

Adam Bouskila on November 3, 2005 said:

IM is like a flu to this site’s theme, in my opinion. You cannot do anything productive while chatting.

I have days where I chat with multiple people, and other days where I barely chat, so it varies.

“Mostly they’re similar to a conversation I’d have if a friend phoned me up to talk about their day.”

Yep. Most conversations aren’t trivial, but some of my chats can include deep discussions.

Conversations with intellectual people are most productive in means of learning a lot through ‘deep’ discussions. Conversations you have with people whom you chat with daily are very often not productive.

IM distracts you and wastes a lot of time in our 24 hour days. Still, I like chatting.

Mark Sicignano on November 3, 2005 said:

Add my name to the list of people who feel that it’s a technology that provides no benefits that I can think of.

I actually prefer to call it “Instant Interruption” because that’s what it is. In the office, it’s already hard enough to find a reasonably solid block of time to get into flow on any one task. Why would you want to have something on your desktop popping up and getting into slow paced conversations in IM.

I’ve noticed that most people who think it’s great are the ones who say, “It’s nice when I have a question, I can just IM somebody and ask them.”

Of course, for that other person, it’s an interruption that knocks them out of whatever they were doing… That would be too aggravated to me.

Sometimes when I’m working with somebody who has IM on their machine and we’re trying to debug a problem or work on something together, the little window pops up in the corner, and I see their focus go right there.

Basically, if you want to have a conversation in realtime, call me. We can talk a lot faster than we can type. If you have something that you simply need to tell me or that doesn’t need an immediate response, email me. Email gets to me in seconds, but I get to decide when I actually want to check it and read and respond.

patRice on November 3, 2005 said:

I also feel IM can influence productivity negatively.

I hardly ever open my IM clients (Yahoo & Adium).

On average, I’d say I have about one IM chat every
two days. Usually with friends on the other side of
the planet; and about once every month with a cu-
stomer in the US.

ryan on November 3, 2005 said:

I’m more fan of the IRC. I’m always there. I don’t have to answer straight away. If I’m away I can see what people have been talking about etc.

I’m using it on couple of my projects and at work too. It’s wonderful way of communicating.

I RARELY use any IM clients.

AK on November 4, 2005 said:

We use the Sametime instant messenger at work. I decided to aggregate all my clients into one so I switched to GAIM. Now I have a 1 stop program for ICQ, MSN, Y! and Sametime.

While IM is a great tool and helps me get in touch with my overseas team, it is a huge distraction. I only use it when I need to deperately get in touch with someone (usually for work). I already carry a cellphone, a pager and check my mail every 10 minutes at work. IM is a vice I can do without.

As far as personal IM’ing goes, I’m one small step from giving that up completely. If someone really needs to get in touch with me, they can call me or better yet come see me in person.

Also, IM feels terribly impersonal. At least on a phone, someone can judge my mood by the tome of my voice. On IM all anyone has are smileys and ROTLF types.

Gavin van Lelyveld on November 4, 2005 said:

I use IM to chat to colleagues and friends all the time. Even to people I sit very close to. It sounds like a silly thing to do but sometimes you want to say: “what do you think about this error message ”. It makes more sense to do that than stand up and say “I’ve sent you a message in your email will you let me know what you think?”. I think IM is pretty ignorable. If you are busy or in the zone then you don’t have to reply to it right away.

Also, I’m busy interviewing someone for a position in my company as I type! I’ve also found 2 other employees, and done interviews with them, over IRC. So chatting software is really really useful. It doesn’t replace a final face-to-face, but it is really useful.

So in summary, Very Important business tool, and great for keeping up with friends :)

Hugh on November 4, 2005 said:

I’m a bit of a different case as I’m the only person in my department in the UK. I work for a pan-european team as a subdivision of a global project.

I have five to ten windows open constantly and have constant asynchronous conversations with one or two people at all times.

IM is primarily used as an attention-getter within the team – you start a conversation with text and then either move up to a call, or sideways to an email.

Typical IM conversations are something like:

“you free?”
“no, I’ll get back to you” (followed by a couple of sentences describing what you want to talk about later, or a note to say “expect an email on this…”
or
“yes” (which is then followed by a call on Skype).

Skype is ideal because it lets you escalate within one interface.

This has taken a while to evolve, and is now settling into a routine – so that people can work without distraction, while still staying available to people who are not physically present.

misterchris on November 4, 2005 said:

I never use IM despite flirting with it every couple of months. I find it a tedious tool whereby conversations are just too difficult to maintain.
If there’s two of you talking you write over each others questions and talk at the same time.
If there’s multiple people talking you must address each in time and often answer someones question poorly because you just don’t have the time to commit to a full answer.
Every few months I give IM another go because ‘everyone else does it’. After several frustrating minutes I close the thing down and vow never to go back.

Ed Davis on November 4, 2005 said:

At the office I never use IM although I am looking at ways that it might allow me to better serve my small business IT Clients.

At home I use it on occasion to converse with friends. My wife uses it very often to talk to one of her friends, even though we have VOIP and a phone call would be free!

Mad William Flint on November 4, 2005 said:

I’m a ‘burst’ IM user. With accounts on several services I rarely IM BUT, when I do, I end up having several conversations in parallel that can go for hours.

I love the format and would definitely use it a great deal more if I could cajole my non-techie friends into getting in to it.

Plus, it’s utility in the workplace is wonderful.

cory on November 4, 2005 said:

my company has employees spread all over the world. we use im frequently to get answers to quick questions, project updates, availability status, etc. basically for anything that requires multiple quick responses, and doesn’t need to be formally documented in an email. i find im to be very helpful – actually invaluable – for my job. it is only a distraction when people ignore my ‘busy’ status (very bad form). i probably have about 10 meaningful work related conversations a day. less frequently i use it to catch up with friends. for this i find the group conversation feature to be most useful.

Silvia on November 4, 2005 said:

What a topic! It got much more answers than any other! I am sure that this can be useful, as I suggested to my friend whose husband was in Indiaa for months. But they did the same I do, a long email is much consistent for people who used to write letters in the past. As Brian says ” we use IM to keep up with work stuff” I am sure it can be a good tool. I’ve tried it twice, find it too dispersive. I prefer to waste time on the phone.

Jordan on November 4, 2005 said:

I use Trillian for messaging, and have accounts on AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Y!. I also have Google Talk, but I’ve never used it.

Because Trillian has the ability to keep you “away” while in conversation, I tend to put myself on “busy/away” for all the services. I really only have it so that people from the hobby group I run online can message me with issues, but the problem is that IM is a complete and TOTAL efficiency buster. I ask that people only message me from my hobby group of they really need something—otherwise I get a deluge of chatter about absolutely nothing.

In general I may have 1-2 conversations a day, though.

beth on November 4, 2005 said:

I have about 5-6 conversations a day. The conversations usually consist of the following:

Catching up with a friend or family member I don’t see often because of either distance or conflicting schedules

Checking in at home about errands, daily tasks

Sharing urls between co-workers for work-related items

beth on November 4, 2005 said:

Also i forgot, when I’m really in a crunch for time and need to get something done, I turn instant messenger off. I also use trillian, because I find its ad free interface less of a distraction.

Mattias on November 4, 2005 said:

What I like about IM is the ubiquitousness. For me, someone saying something to me via MSN doesn’t mean that I have to drop everything and get talking, but I know several people who does. Hence, they tend to be logged out when they want to do something most of the time. For me, Internet access in itself is the time stealer, so whenever I want to focus on studying I turn off the Wi-Fi in my laptop.

Normally, I tell people hello when I want to talk to them for one reason or another. Then again, on occasion, I feel in the mood for a little chit-chat, and I see whoever’s on and try to get some social interaction out of them.

One friend of mine has two different accounts, one for work and one for home. That way, he can send messages to himself in a context where he can do something with them. I would like to be able to do this too, but not using two accounts. Wow, I managed to turn a comment about my habits into a rant about what IM should be… Shame on me!

chris on November 4, 2005 said:

I used to IM a LOT. I quit it a year ago and I’m much more productive now. Sometimes I do “chat” via GMail which is kind of like IM.

Mariann on November 4, 2005 said:

I rarely use chat because I find it too distracting. I prefer the time-delay that using email affords me because I can think my thoughts before committing them to the virtual page.

I used to have chat open all the time for my students to reach me, but it became cumbersome and frustrating to deal with excessive use of net speak and an overall lack of identity with the other chatter. I mean, there are only so many guesses I can make for CinnamonBrownSexxy instead of JaneyDoe.

These days, when I do sign onto chat, it’s usually to communicate with my spousal unit about our son. This is preferable to using the cell phone because my hands and mind are free to continue working. :)

Kathy on November 4, 2005 said:

I use Adium on my PowerBook for chatting.

I chat a bit with my husband while we are both at work. I work for a K-12 school where we don’t use IM inside the schools, but I’ve worked with companies that do use it and it was very useful for people communicating between buildings. I’m not sure why they didn’t just use the phone, though…lol.

I also occasionally use it to chat with family and friends who live several states away.

My mother-in-law has a daily appointment to chat with her mother (85 years old and chats every day!) to keep up with her. They also live several states apart and are unable to see each other often.

Jason Echols on November 4, 2005 said:

I currently work on a team that consists of members of other teams that are spread out accross the country. We have members in Anaheim, Huntsville, St. Louis and Houston. The chosen mode of communication is intercompany IM.

There are those moments when IM is not good enough and we have to call. But we communicate alot of information in a short time without even picking up the phone. We also can use IM to send files. So this is also a huge plus.

On a typical day, I may have as many as 5 IM windows open in which I carry on conversations that stay open ended all day with other team members.

lyndonk on November 4, 2005 said:

my son is a peace corps volunteer in Bolivia, teaching computer literacy in a rural high school. We maintain contact through IM.

my wife is a red cross volunteer and has been in Texas, Louisiana and Florida over the last month or so. We maintain contact through IM.

I telecommute to work three days a week and am able to maintain political and engineering contacts throug IM.

In short, IM makes my day to day life much more enjoyable and manageable.

lyndonk

Scott on November 4, 2005 said:

We use IM a lot at one of the offices I work at. The company rents out two small offices in a building. Our phones have a few lines, but no individual extensions, so instead we use IM to let people throughout the offices know when they have a call. It’s incredibly convenient. It’s also nice to be able to ask quick questions, and questions that can be answered by a link or code snip. I feel that it really increases productivity.

Silvia on November 4, 2005 said:

Just to add two comments: my old aunts and their children (or nephews) who live in different countries use it everyday like Kathy and Lyndonk mentioned.

Ron on November 5, 2005 said:

I use it for our afternoon status updates and discussions, as we have team members in many states. Its not really instant, as we schedule it, but as a collaboration tool its incredibly useful. Much better than a phone, as one can drop off the conversation to attend to research or data requests, thus letting the rest of the team return to work until you are done. This beats in person meetings, and phone meetings, where in multitasking results in missed communication ( and would be rude to boot)

The phone has proven to be a terrible waste of money. Since we implemented IM meetings, our telco costs have dropped by 70%, we no longer need to have a secretary take notes, and most of the group can multitask and accomplish low workload end of the day tasks concurrent with our IM meetings. A real productivity booster.

This is not to say that a voice meeting, or in person meetings are done away with, but instead occur once a month, instead of numerous times a week.

Paul D on November 5, 2005 said:

For starters, I dislike instant messaging. It completely disrupts my work.

That said, I use it with work clients and partners who like it, because it’s less disruptive than telephone calls. I have 1-2 conversations a day with it.

I also use it occasionally (a few times a week) to chat with a few online-only friends.

Ken on November 5, 2005 said:

I am a male. I find that IMing for work is very productive. Not so much in personal interactions where tone of voice, facial expression and other body language indicators are more important.
I IM 2-5 times a day. Each session averaging about 25 messages.

bliz on November 6, 2005 said:

I am male, 20. I use IM daily about 0-5 times. I usually use it to chat with my friends who are studying overseas. It’s cheaper than the phone and yet it confers the instant reply of the phone. My conversations are trivial half the time. Yes, I talk to my friends, family and coworkers. Not everyone I know uses gtalk or skype, otherwise i would be chatting with voice more often.

Eric S. Mueller on November 6, 2005 said:

I once scoffed at IM as being in the realm of teenagers, but I’ve found it to be a very useful communications tool. It’s enabled me to stay in touch with a couple of Navy buddies whom I probably would have drifted apart from. We all work computer related jobs, so we log on in the morning and chat throughout the day as our schedules permit. Most of it is social, although we do often trade professional advice. One of my frieds has completed the same degree that I’m working toward, so I’ll often ask him four advice about my courses.

It’s also useful for my wife to IM me during the day to make plans. I actually wish more companies would embrace IM as a valuable communications tool.

JaX on November 7, 2005 said:

I chat with at least half a dosen people every day. Most of my conversations are longwinded, and can last for hours on end. I use Trillian, but I only chat via the AIM plugin. I find that IM chats are not stressful, in compairison to phone conversations where I am obliged to keep up the conversation. My chats can be dropped and picked up without any loss in communication. I find that IM’s open up the internet for me. Instead of browsing being a personal activity, IM allows me to connect with my friends from all over the globe, and share my findings. It takes a solitary activity and makes it a group event.

elv on November 7, 2005 said:

I don’t IM. I have an account on every major network, and even Miranda and Google Talk installed, but never use them – unless I need too.
I just can’t work while an instant messenger beeps or flashes. I get disctracted very easily.
I even turned off the sound notification for email because everytime a mail arrived I heard the beep and compulsively clicked on the icon :)

I don’t know how people manage to chat AND work. I mean it’s like working with a TV turned on next to you, how can you not being distracted?

Chad on November 8, 2005 said:

IMing used to be a bigger part of my life, back before I was married. I actually met my wife via Yahoo! Messenger and that’s how we stayed in contact with each other over the years of our friendship and eventual dating and engagement, since we lived about 1000 miles away from each other.

Now, though, I don’t IM all that much, but I do have a lot of friends on AIM, so I usually have that logged on during the evening when I’m at home and usually a couple times a night I’ll have a conversation with a couple of them. Sometimes these conversations are long and in depth, sometimes its just a simple hello.

My wife uses Trillian and uses it all the time to keep in contact with her family and friends back in Louisiana…so she IMs a lot more than I do.

Alex Hutton on November 8, 2005 said:

I keep it on all the time, but use “away” frequently. I end up being somewhere between “Fraser” above and talkative. I’d use it more, but the people I report to have stopped using it regularly. It’s handy for the “quick question” and, to me, less intrusive than an intra-office phone call or visit to my desk. However, giving friends and family your work IM can be deadly to productivity.

All in all it’s somewhere below the hype and email usefulness, but much better for me than some traditional means of communication.

jack c on November 8, 2005 said:

i only really use IM in my spare time. at times i use it for work, like when working on a specific part of a project. otherwise, i just think it’s a waste of time.

when i do use it in my spare time i usually talk to my family or friends. trivial topics i suppose – just the same as a telefone.

Max Leibman on November 8, 2005 said:

About the only time I’ve ever seriously IMed, it was primarily to flirt. A handful of times in my cubicle-slave days, I used the company’s proprietary chat system; more often than not, however, we would just use Outlook or our webmail clients as a chat platform, sending reems of e-mail back and forth. About 30% was personal and trivial, 30% business and trivial, and 40% useful communication/discussion.

David Graves on November 9, 2005 said:

When I first started using IM it was a complete waste of time and I used it constantly. I do think the novelty wears off after a while. I use it less and less as time goes on. One thing that is horrible with IM is that the conversations are so fragmented that it is easy to misinterpret what other people are writing at times. It is hard to set tone.

Nilavan on November 9, 2005 said:

I normally use IM to chat with my friends who are spread over different places. I go on IM only when I have a purpose to meet someone. But end up chatting with anyone who shows up.. At times, end up spending couple of hours on issueless talks and things like that. IM for me is just like the normal converse..

Vicki Brown on November 10, 2005 said:

The Company (that up until recently employed me) uses Jabber for internal communication. Jabber and Email are used much more than the telephone.

At home Spouse and I have IM windows open all the time. He’s upstairs, I’m down, and we “chat” all day, sending notes and interesting links back and forth.

I “chat” with my Dad (out of state) but Mom and sister use email. I chat with a friend in Texas (I’m in CA). Other friends are in my buddy list. We occaisionally chat.

I don’t use IM to replace email but as a complement

Tommy on November 12, 2005 said:

I work for a virtual company and engage in as least 20 IM conversations a day. There are times I view IM as a productivity enhancer, at other times I am not so sure.

With that said, most of my fellow employees are good at using and respecting a meeting or DND status. Heck, we even use our IM status to know not only if someone is busy, but if they don’t want to be called.

Generally speaking I find IM as an effective way to exchange quick tid bits of information. A URL. Phone number. A POC at a client. Stuff like that.

For me, the phone is the real waster of time. At least w/ my fellow employees they tend to what to chat to much. I find myself saying “well I have to go” often throughout the course of the day.

Marcelo Ruiz on November 13, 2005 said:

I used to IM really a lot!! I think the problem is that I started my “relation” with computers through Internet, email and chat, as many young people, so I was really used to have ICQ open all the time and “Free for chat” most of the time.
Now, I only open it when I need it. I use it to chat with some clients, but usually agree the meeting time in advance by mail.
Also, I only open Mail when I finish what I was doing.

The Dude on November 14, 2005 said:

Well, I used instant messaging for a good 4 years. But eventually I got rid of it. It get’s annoying when you’re surfing a webpage, playing a game, just plain minding your business, and then out of nowhere a window pops up with someone saying “Hey!”. I mean, I don’t mind having conversations with people, but it gets annoying after awhile. Some people just always say ‘hi’ to you whenever they get online.

I like to use IM as I would a phone. If I got something I need to ask someone, I’ll ask them, otherwise, I’ll just leave them alone.

Anyways, I got rid of all of my instant messaging stuff for about a year. I ended up losing touch with basically all of my ‘internet friends’, and also lost touch with some real friends too. They only used IM and never used a phone or anything.

GrumpySmurf on November 14, 2005 said:

I use Lotus Sametime for IM at work (company requirement) through a plugin for Trillian, which of course runs all my other chat mediums (ICQ AIM MSN Y!). Most of my communication during the day is through instant messaging. I use it for collaborating and communicating with teammates and other business groups, catching up with old and current friends, etc etc. I’m pretty much an IM junkie, really.

Yzabel on November 15, 2005 said:

I tend to use it for work a lot, since I work from home most of the time, and it’s easier to keep contact this way than to wait for coworkers to weed through their 400 e-mails of the day to reach mine and finally answer.

For personal use… well, the people I mostly use it with are my boyfriend when we’re both working, and 2-3 friends who live abroad and are harder to reach by phone. My parents have also got their connection installed a few weeks ago, but we don’t Im that often, as they’re still quite at unease with it and discovering the many wodners of the Web.

Concersation windows… I’ll keep 2 going on at once; more than that, I find difficult to manage without not ending up doing only that. It indeed tends to get quickly distracting when doing something on the comp—and I’m never “just idling” on the comp waiting for people to come online and chat with them. I guess that’s why I’m in Busy, Away or Invisible modes most of the time, in fact.

Jorgeq on November 18, 2005 said:

I generally log on to chat via my SideKick phone. At times I carry up to 4 conversations at once, which can become a bit overwhelming on a small device.

Holly on November 18, 2005 said:

I use it infrequently.. 95 percent of the time it’s family memebers, most often my husband, to check in with him while he’s at work, see how he’s doing, send love notes, that sort of thing. He’s always busy at work (programmer/analyst) so I keep it short. Two of my three adult children have moved out, and I occasionally talk to them. FWIW I really dislike talking to people via IM that I don’t know IRL (in real life), and I keep the IM programs on 24/7 (DSL) but I also keep my status as invisible 24/7. The people who matter know that.

The other five percent of the time, I’m talking to my long distance lover who lives about 400 miles away. Sometimes it’s naughty, sometimes it’s mundane. And yes, before anyone gets in an uproar, I’m polyamorous and my husband of ten years certainly knows about my sweetie of 24 years. Deal. IM keeps me sane and happy. :)

Matt on November 22, 2005 said:

I chose IM names that let me colleagues know to keep it brief and professional (e.g. “ImWorking”).

Jean on November 24, 2005 said:

I’ve only really started using IM this week, believe it or not. And not really as if I planned it – it just happened. All the conversations have been business related and way more efective and productive than email.

Rachel C on November 29, 2005 said:

I’m about to write up a paper regarding my IM study I did with students using IM for educational purposes (tutoring, help support services etc).

Jay Electronica on December 26, 2005 said:

I use IM all of the time. I’m in a long distance relationship so my girlfriend and i use it alot. Whenever i’m online i leave it open, and am usually chatting with someone who is aiding me with some sort of coding problem that i’ve run into.

I actually wish that more of my friends and family used some sort of IM client. This way, it would be much easier to communicate seeing as i dont always have the time or energy for the telephone.

Diana Goreham on February 13, 2006 said:

Can you please get rid of, or tell me what to do. This buddy thing is on my e-mails, is in with my favourites etc. lIST of areas where I can look on up something quickly. Would also give me a lot more room on the toolbar.

This PC is for work not play. Do not have the time for muck around with this kid’s site.

DIANA GOREHAM

jhon on May 27, 2006 said:

nice to meet u

jhon on May 27, 2006 said:

love is life

jhon on May 27, 2006 said:

very nice messenger

Ryan on September 21, 2006 said:

I mostly use IM to keep in touch with distant friends. While at work, use of IM is usually restricted only to work related conversations.