Instant messaging may be past its prime

June 3, 2008 by Kurt
Filed under: general 

My daughter is 16 and, like most of her peers, she worships at the altar of Facebook regularly. She and her friends plan gatherings, share photos and routinely keep in touch. And in April, when Facebook launched its live chat application, she emitted an audible groan at the prospect of being that much in touch.

She instantly deactivated the instant messaging feature. This, by the way, from a child who would routinely have four or five IM conversations going three years ago.

Ever since Facebook chat launched, I’ve had an item about instant messaging simmering in the back of my brain. Frankly, it seemed to me that Facebook was late to the party. When it launched, I realized that my AOL Instant Messenger application dutifully launches whenever I boot up my laptop — but I rarely IM anyone anymore.

In fact, at the time, I think I’d gone more than a week without a single IM conversation.

I posed a question on my Twitter account, asking whether folks still used IM. The response was generally tepid, as though people either didn’t care about it or weren’t using it.

And, I went hunting for statistics about how much instant messaging usage is out there. I couldn’t find much current information. There was this study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project…from 2004: “about 53 million American adults … use instant messaging programs. About 11 million of them IM at work and they are becoming fond of its capacity to encourage productivity and interoffice cooperation.”

There was a reference to a Gartner Group study that said “by 2006 IM will usurp e-mail as the preferred method for communication.” Doesn’t look like that happened.

Is there anything more current out there? I missed it, if there is — but I’m happy to stand corrected. It occurs to me that if the topic isn’t even worth studying anymore, maybe the trend is behind us.

Not that I don’t see real-time online communication. My Twitter feed is filled with @ replies as people reach out to each other - but Twitter serves other needs as well (it’s a multi-tasker!). And so, apparently, can similar services like Jaiku, Tumblr and Plurk (which is just launching and has its own birth pains - outlined by my colleague Erica Smith here).

I’d love to hear from others about their experiences with instant messaging of late. And, for the record, I’m among those who actually thinks the Facebook app is pretty good. Clean, easy to use and even includes a hack to chat when you’re not actually on your FB page.

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Comments

  • I was really surprised to see, after I graduated from college two years ago, how quickly my AIM use dropped. And it's not just because I'm using Twitter way too much -- most of my college friends have also stopped using AIM.

    Aside from Facebook, the other main factor is the chat feature in Gmail. Can't overlook that.
  • For me, IM has become more focused. I don't use it to casually talk to people, but when I do use it, it's more intense. I've branched out to use other tools for planning, like Google Calendar and twitter. Now I just use IM the way I used to use the telephone - when I need an instant response or information.
  • I also noticed a huge decline in how much I used IM and chat applications after I graduated way back when. But I picked it up again when I started at the Post-Dispatch in 2006. Now I use it daily at work (many of them are just now downloading IM applications) and/or to communicate with friends in other states. Either way, I agree with Jason -- the conversations are very focused. Twitter and Plurk are more scatter conversations -- when I want to throw something at a large group of people, I start there and see what sticks.
  • Same here as Erica and Jason - I use IM as a way to connect with a few co-workers, and follow a few people on twitter. But the cases you mention bring up an interesting point - gmail and facebook make IM a web feature, not an application. Or maybe it's now an application within the web OS... either way, I use meebo, not an app. Having IM as a tab in firefox makes it way more useful and less of an interruption.
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