In light of my recent post regarding timely responses to email, I thought I’d share this report from The Center for Media Research.
According to a newly-released IDC study, the worldwide enterprise instant messaging applications market jumped 37% in terms of year-over-year revenue in 2004, and the value, necessity, and use of IM applications for business use is expected to grow from $315 million in 2005 to $736 million in 2009.
Robert P. Mahowald, program director for IDC, said “With more than 28 million business users worldwide… sending nearly 1 billion messages each day in 2005, and many more crossover corporate consumers who use consumer instant messaging networks in the workplace, these products are clearly reaching more mainstream users. Especially in compliance-driven sectors like Wall Street, financial services, and government, instant messaging is a critical differentiator… IDC expects instant messaging – once the plaything of teenagers – to continue to grow into its role as a substantial business collaboration application.”
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I wonder if one of the reasons that businesses are embracing Instant Messaging is as a means for circumventing the mountains of emails that are sitting in our emailboxes. As we moved from snailmail to fax to email, for the most part we abandoned the prior method rather than using the each newer faster delivery vehicle only as needed. Now that we are being overwhelmed by a larger and larger volume of email at work, I suspect that Instant Messaging is being adopted as the latest means of prioritizing urgent messages. Given time, when we get buried underneath a mountain of IMs, someone will have to come up with something else.
And remember when we didn’t have answering machines? If your call went unanswered, you had to call back later. Now my voice mailbox is full of messages from people who choose to call at their convenience rather than during my business hours and I have to figure out how to return all the messages in a timely fashion. Convenience is great, but I can place only a limited number of calls in a day. And call waiting? I love the fact that I don’t have to worry about missing an emergency call, but as common as it has become, some people still don’t like being put on hold so that you can talk to someone else.
What is your preferred method of communication? When was the last time you wrote a letter and handed it to a mail carrier?