Collaboration Loop, By Irwin Lazar, 2/28/07

Instant messaging could almost be considered as “the grand daddy” of real-time collaboration applications. IM has its roots in IRC (Internet Relay Chat), which if Wikipedia is accurate, dates back to 1988 (and has its own roots in other IP-based chat services such as Bitnet).

For many, including myself, IM has become the preferred means of communication. I, like many as well, have accounts on multiple IM systems, which I manage through a single application (Adium on the Mac, Gaim on the PC). For most people, IM is still predominantly a text-based chat application though most public and enterprise IM services now support VOIP. Even for VOIP-centric services such as Skype, I’d be willing to bet that it is used far more for text messaging than for live voice calls.

Why has IM become so popular? I think it is due to the fact that it is currently the least invasive way of communicating with someone. IM’s don’t interrupt people as much as phone calls. They don’t require constant attention, you can simply read the IM, go back to what you are doing, and respond at a later time. And, conversations can go on for long period of times. For example, I kept a running IM conversation with three colleagues over the last week as we worked on developing a chapter of our “Building a Successful Virtual Workplace” benchmark. I found it incredibly helpful to not only have the constantly open channel for communications, but also the log of previous messages. I imagine that if I had to pick up the phone every time I had a question, I would find that my colleagues had set their phone systems to automatically dump me into voice mail.

Read the rest of this article on Collaboration Loop