There is a “culture divide” in the instant messaging world and I think that this post by Zaphoria is close to pinning it down. Being online for chat has a tendency to signal different things to different people.
One specific tiny annoying thing I experience in this “presence vs. communication” aspect of the IM world is that when I get up in the morning (or middle of night or whenever my sleeping schedule reaches the “wake up” stage) I will wake my computer and check email and maybe read the news or flip through RSS feeds. Adium, which is often open, automatically logs me on to AIM and MSN. Sometimes I get bombarded with messages…only seconds after gaining consciousness. I think I need a feature in my chat program which delays the log-in-when-waking-computer feature by about 15 minutes to give me time to let the world come into focus.
I think the solution to much of the cultural difference in the IM world is to be found in 3 things:
1) Allow us to control which group of people can view us online at any time. That means we can filter out our “log on only for conversation” friends from our “always on and conveniently reachable for quick questions etc.” types – and be able to do this without them knowing it so they don’t get hurt that we don’t always let them see us online.
2) Ditch the simple binary “Here” vs. “Away” status to have a more rich range of status. You can do this now in many chat programs with text in the status line, but the problem is that people usually ignore them completely even if their program can shows this status line text.
3) Propagate as a universally tolerated practice the sensible idea in my “IM culture” that instant messaging isn’t always (or usually) about a sustained conversation where immediate answers are forthcoming (like a phone conversation) but can involve significant delays in reply and be incorporated into our multi-tasking. Thus I can read a book, read a page or two or three, then reply to an incoming IM (or several queued incoming IM messages) and go back to reading a while – or whatever task I was doing. Too many people I know think that if I say something to them on IM, then I’m doing nothing but IM…which may be true for them but certainly not for me.
These will all contribute, I think to incorporating IM productively into our lives.
I hear that the next major update to MSN Messenger will allow you to show different online/offline statuses to different people or groups of people.
The “status” problem, I think, could be solved if people applied them more consistently. If you’re the kind of person who is always set on “busy” but reply to messages anyway, people are going to ignore your “busy” line. (I have one friend who’s ALWAYS busy, even when having long conversations with me about cats.) But if you make a point of only replying to messages after you turn “busy” off (even if that takes hours) people might get the message.
hey, download the new MSN Beta thingie, it lets u set ur status before signing in, so u can ‘appear offline’ and sign in.
the other thing is to have to two MSN lists, one with the ppl u would chat with if they were online (i have my family and some of my closest friends on it..not more than 10 ppl) and another with everyone, which now has some 80 ppl and which i log on to intermittently..but when I’m working I log on to the ‘exclusive’ one..coz these are ppl who either won’t disturb me, or are close enough for me to tell them that I’m working, or if they are online I do want to talk to coz I don’t talk to them often enough. anyway, have a good weekend. sorry about the lunch thingie today…lunch with prof bose took over 2 hours…will tell u abt it when we meet. message/email me if u want to meet up any time this weekend..i should be in my room procrastinating for most of the time!!
Hmm, I went and read the post, and OK, if there are really people who get mad because you won’t talk to them despite being online, my solution doesn’t really work. But I think the real issue there is that those PEOPLE are crazy. (And if they won’t listen to sensible explanations, preferring to believe that you’re a mendacious tool, why would you even -want- to talk to them…?) My friends all understand the IM thing pretty well, in particular that logged-on doesn’t always mean able-to-speak.
Thanks for your comments…I think it is probably just a matter of time before both the more advanced tools develop and there is a broader understanding of the different ways that people use chat.
Being consistent is important, but talking while “away” is also a way to talk to those need to send messages to about immediate functional things without being drawn into conversation with good, but distant friends who will need a more thorough conversation…
I have an account for people I’ll talk to at anytime and an account for everyone else. It’d be nice not to divide it up like that but part of it is about removing the temptation from ME.