Today, David Weinberger discusses his upcoming keynote at an Instant Messaging conference (Do they really have conferences about IM that you travel to and stuff? Why don't they just type to eachother?) David invites commentary (he's always been a smart guy) to bullet-test his ideas, which I think are great. Among them: "While the persistence of IM messages is quite low, the persistence of IM groups is quite high. In other words: buddy lists rule. We need to make more of buddy lists. First, we need a way to move threads among all the different conversation forms (and he sites the threads ML initiative)."
This is all true, and as we join together in these small (and growing) conversations, I don't know how IM will scale, or if it should. To me, it's not a technology that should connect one to many. It's a technology that's best at connecting one to a couple or few. If IM is, as Tom Matrullo says today, "more like typing through a telephone; it can be intense and tends to grab all my attention," then it is perhaps akin to the "three-way" or "conference call" phone features many of us use today.
But David's premise that IM at home is a lot like IM at work strikes me differently. I am someone who uses IM both at home and at work, and they are different beasts to be sure. While I welcome IM interruptions at home, because it is a lot like a phone call from one of my friends that I'm happy to receive, I'm not always so glad to get "brrrringed" by my clients, who tend to look at IM as our online umbilical cord. One of the first questions I get in working with a new client is, "What's your IM screen name so I can add you to my buddy list?!" (the exclamation point is purposeful--they ask the question with glee.) Because I'm online virtually round the clock, this is like giving them my home phone number (which I also do), except that I can close my IM and they don't know I'm online then, just like I sometimes don't answer my calls.
For me, IM in the work world has become less like chatting and more like an air raid siren--red alert, incoming incoming! I need help putting out a fire. Which is all fine--that's what we're paid for. But it's definitely not like my home IM experience.
The day my client figured out how to talk at me through yahoo messenger, and I mean literally talk to me, I really got the jitters. I sat peacefully playing with my daughter in the living room, when my laptop, from its usual member-of-the-family spot on the couch, yelled at me. "Jeneane! Can you hear me? Are you there? I need some help." Huh? My daughter, who's four, was undaunted. "Make your computer talk again, mommy!"
So, although the occasional IM with my aunts is a blast and all the playful fun David talks about in his premise, to me IM at work--while it bridges distance and time and that is great for business--isn't always so much fun. It makes me feel more like a responsibility-laden adult then an adolescent. In fact, it kind of gives me agita.
"brrrrrrrring!"
