The Death of IM?
Some time back I was having a conversation with a friend of mine in NYC. Our conversation, at the time, seemed very cumbersome and almost difficult, as we were having it via @replies over Twitter. I didn’t have any IM names for my friend, and so, as it were, we were bouncing tweets back and forth. As we ended the conversation, I told my friend to hit me up on IM sometime - Yahoo, and gave him my screen name. His response was “You kids and your IM platforms…”
Now, at the time, I thought “well that’s silly, IM is so much easier to communicate and have a conversation in realtime than Twitter, wonder why he’d say that.”
Then I got Twitterific on my iPhone, got with the times using friendfeed to aggregate all of my online activity, and updated this website (which used to be a Wordpress blog linked to all of the various ‘things’ I do online - but is now a simple Tumblog with my friendfeed built right into the template.) Love it.
Through this process, however, I thought more and more about my friend’s comment about IM. And just today it now makes sense in my mind.
We all have busy lives. We all need to focus on certain things throughout our days. IM, realistically, is an interuption to this focus. This causes either a complete drop off in productivity, or at the very least, less attention being given to your work, or whatever it is you may be focused on. If you’re on a timeclock, or expected to perform to a certain level, OR simply WANT to accomplish a certain task, this can be detrimental to your success.
So now I see the forest for the trees. Where I was writing paragraphs to my friends over IM, and EXPECTING their immediate and undivided attention in the past, I’m now forced to write my words in under 160 characters, which prompts me to laser point everything I say. AND with IM, I feel an instant obligation to remove myself from that which I’m doing, and respond to the incoming message. It feels a little like a phone call for me, must answer immediately. With Twitter, while there are times when I will indeed answer almost immediately, it doesn’t feel required, but rather a much more conscious choice I’m making to do so.
Whether it was your intention or not, thank you Ben for this revalation. =) I know my clients would thank you too if they had the chance, because my productivity will increase with my Adium sitting nicely quiet and inactive in the dock.
