life without IM

Although i spend a lot of time researching social communities, i tend to avoid meeting new people online. It’s not that i don’t trust people online (because they usually come via friends or via interests), but that i am dreadful at maintaining virtual or long distance relationships, let alone building them. At the same time, i was thinking how essential virtual connections are for me to maintain my real life friendships. While cell phones are essential for maintaining face in teenage culture, i definitely find IM pretty crucial for my life. I’m far more likely to ping my IM friends for dinner and see them more often simply because i can reach out to them with ease. I keep up with my IM friends on daily life activities and they end up being my trusted network. I become friends far more quickly with friends i’ve met offline who have IM than those who do not. This was definitely true in college, but i’m surprised at how much it has persisted to this day and been impacted by the fact that many of my friends have stopped using IM and have fallen off of my daily radar.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

6 thoughts on “life without IM

  1. sungo

    IM is indispensable for my work as well. now, i work for aol, so that has something to do with it but still 🙂 telework is made possible for us through IM. its kinda crazy how deeply its infected my life 🙂

  2. Zay

    I despise IM. When I got my internet job three years ago, and had a computer and internet connection for the first time (I was slow), IM drove me nuts. It was as if people could suddenly appear on my desk whenever the hell they wanted. There were no boarders at all. Forget it.

  3. sungo

    i used to despise IM because as Zay says, its interruption based communication. i found a way around it tho. i only use im clients that let me use a tabbed window (all my im sessions in one window each with a seperate tab). then when i want to i can minimize that window and everyone goes away 🙂

  4. Irina

    It is interesting how different technologies are adopted in different countries and how this adoption is mediated by cultural differences and economic structures. One example of course is the difference in use of SMS (text messaging on phones) and IM for teenagers in Europe and in the US. What amuses me most though is the strange insistence of researchers in respective countries that since one technology is so prevalent there is no way the other might become prominent and important any time soon (or ever).

    So… two questions – one is – have you given some thought to why IM is so integral to the US as a medium and not so much in Europe. After all, most of us use IM on desktop computers which effectively renders it stationary, yet the largest resource invested in an IM conversation in this country is time since our computer access relatively cheap. SMS on the other hand is mobile – its IM but from anywhere… however there are two snags – SMS is limited by provider (you can’t SMS to sprint-mobile-users for example or at least not as easily) AND you have to pay for incoming SMS as well as outgoing (albeit a nominal 2 cents per message). Then there is the shitty keyboard input on the phone… So, two technologies, essentially similar in their function – short messages to people at will – one mobile while the other comparatively stationary – difference in adoption (economic structures and marketing play a big role here of course).

    The other questions is SMS and mobile phones exploded in Europe for two reasons – price and mobility and it is mobility that is touted as the most important aspect of the technology. IM (and general Internet) use are catching up, however, it is hypothesised that Internet and e-mail/IM use in Europe and Asia is a little slower than in the US (the patterns of use are definately different) precisely because of the lack of mobiliy and the proliferation of cell phones. E-mail enabled cell phones are becoming very popular in asia now (and in Europe). So… two sides of the pacific, two different technologies, two adoption patterns… technologies themselves are not that different (interruption based, low opportunity costs, text/voice, immediacy/delay), but the aspects of adoption surrounding them are…

    maybe IM is not a full picture?

  5. zephoria

    Irina – you are totally right in that it is the cultural contexts that separate SMS from IM in most countries.

    For example, in the States, many people work long (not so very productive) hours, procrastinating at will with a technology that makes them look productive. How much are long IM hours due to job/school procrastination?

    In Europe, teenagers don’t spend as much time socializing at home – it is quite common for teenagers to gather outside of the house. Plus, many households share a computer in a way that is not common in the States.

    And obviously, you’ve also tackled the systematic problems that separate us. This comes down to the business-centric approach that cell phone carriers have had in the States.

    I would love to live in a culture where SMS was prevalent. But i don’t. And thus, i spend my time on IM.

Comments are closed.