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August 02, 2005
Instant Messaging as the Email Killer?
DM News recently published an article about trend we've all been hearing about: Teens prefer instant messaging over email. The implication of this is that teens will grow up to become adults, and bring their IM habits with them. And therefore, along the way, email in its current form, will be replaced by IM.
While I'm still a handful of years away from living with any teenagers, I think this trend has more to do with being a teenager than IM emerging as the new "killer app."
Let's step back and look at this. Obviously, some adults live on IM, and some teens swear by email, so what we're discussing here are generalizations. Furthering those generalizations, I propose that being a teenager is a very different thing than being an adult. (Call the press!) Teenagers live in a highly social world and receive a lot of positive social feedback for being active in that world. In other words (and I know I'll get some push-back on this), teenagers achieve social status in their lives primarily through social interactions. Instant messaging supports this, and allows them to reach out and interact with a widely dispersed group of friends with maximum ease.
Now, let's switch to adults. Clearly, being socially interactive provides positive benefits for these folks as well, but incorporates the added dimension of mortgages, families and jobs. While social status is still important, it is achieved as much by apparent income and the trappings of success as it is by "hanging out and chatting." In fact, I'd argue that the older you get (and I do have some experience at this), the more "hanging out" becomes less of an option. Your time becomes extremely limited and, if you want to do something well, you usually need to sit down and focus on it. As Alexander Graham Bell said, "Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus." Managing your life by focusing on one area at a time, especially when put in light of careers, is the hallmark of adulthood, and a tool like email strongly supports this mode of operation.
So, there you have it. Instant messaging is great for an interruption-driven, highly social lifestyle. Email is great for a time-compressed, get-down-and-focus-on-each-project-one-at-a-time lifestyle. I believe that the IM-using teens of the world today will shift effortlessly into being the email-using adults of the tomorrow.
Posted by Bill Nussey at August 2, 2005 08:08 AM
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Comments
You're right to contend that most of these teens will grow into using email just fine. And in their personal lives, the demographics you suggest will probably hold true. That said, I think companies are just beginning to understand the value of instant messaging in a business context. Email is highly asynchronous, and good at providing an audit trail of the conversation. In development teams, I've found that instant messaging can often take the place of the "drop in conversation" - that quick question that needs answering quickly, and may require some back and forth to clarify the exact problem and solution. Email works well when the answer is simple and not time-sensitive. Email doesn't work well when arriving at a conclusion requires 10 messages sent by each person.
This is where IM can shine. It is an improvement over email in its immediacy, requires less effort to respond than an email, and doesn't clutter an Inbox. It is better than stopping by to chat in circumstances where the answer can be communicated by typing. A conversation requires full attention and fully synchronous responses. IM allows multi-tasking and greater latency between responses. You can even hold multiple conversations at the same time. Properly used, I think it also has a place in business, somewhere in between live conversations and email.
Posted by: Rob Kischuk at August 2, 2005 10:39 AM