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AnchorDesk

David Coursey
Don't put instant messaging in a business suit

David Coursey
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Monday, March 3, 2003
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In the PC industry, the phrase "gone corporate" was once widely used to mean the fun had stopped. I remember first hearing it at Spring Comdex in Atlanta, in 1992 I believe (back when people still went to that show), when someone noticed that, for the first time, the marketing people in suits outnumbered the slightly skuzzy developer-types who had, until then, dominated the industry. In the view of some PC pioneers, it was (as Don McLean might describe it) the day the music died.

I tell you this because I'm having one of those deja-vu-all-over-again feelings as I look at what's happening to instant messaging. Microsoft, IBM/Lotus, and others have decided to make IM go corporate. MS, for example, is developing an enterprise IM server that will supposedly make instant messaging secure and accountable enough for business use.

Our default IM client
While just about any instant-messaging software would probably do the job, at AnchorDesk we've standardized on ...
WHAT'S HAPPENING is that corporate IT types are belatedly discovering that some of us already use IM for work. Some of us have been doing so for years. Here at AnchorDesk, for example, our main means of communication--after our daily 10:00 a.m. teleconference--is Yahoo Messenger. Heck, there are times when AnchorDesk staffers who sit within whispering distance of one another use IM to communicate. Sure beats sharing your comments with all the other cubicle rats, doesn't it?

Until now, that's been our little secret. But the gods of enterprise computing, they of the fat wallets, have found us out. And soon the good old days of instant messaging may be over. I fear that instant messaging is about to become perverted. (And I'm not talking about those IMs that seem to show up every few hours from people not on your Buddy List offering you a peek at their webcam).

For example, one of the great things about instant messaging is that, thanks to those little user icons in your IM window, you can tell whether or not someone is available for a quick chat. In the "nobody knows where I am, this is the Internet" sense, this is like being at your desk (or in your home office), present and accounted for. In a workgroup that uses instant messaging, being available online is almost the same as showing up at the office.

Do you use instant messaging at work?
Yes
No
MY CONCERN is that, if IM goes corporate, people will be judged not so much by what they accomplish, but by whether their smiling iconic personae on the IM contact list shows they're "available."

Also, if instant messaging becomes part of the enterprise infrastructure, you could lose your ability to IM with people outside the organization. Everyone who uses instant messaging knows that one of its greatest strengths is that it makes it just as easy to ask a quick question of someone who doesn't work with you, or live with you, or whatever, as someone who does.

I have lots of friends whom I hardly ever see or actually speak to, but with whom I IM almost daily. Now, you might call that an example of "relationship lite," in which people interact only online; I think it's far better than not interacting at all.

But I can easily imagine a scenario in which, for the "greater good" of keeping company information inside the corporate firewall, some companies would try to shut down IM connections to the outside world.

ANOTHER REASON I dread the corporatization of IM: When you type an instant message, you don't expect it to come back to haunt you, to be taken out of context and analyzed to death by people who aren't necessarily friendly to you. Why? Because "gone corporate" instant messages will all be logged and then content-crunched to make sure nobody has said anything they shouldn't have.

With the corporate security and political correctness police looking at every word you type, can the end of meaningful communication be far behind? Sure, people will still gather at the water cooler (or local equivalent) to share ideas. But we'll lose our ability to do so in postcard-sized bursts via IM.

If people stop using instant messaging, the number of phone calls, and the resulting amount of phone tag, are sure to increase. People sometimes complain about the "lost productivity" of instant messaging. But most days I feel that instant messaging was the only reason I got anything done at all.

Sure, some of those messages are either personal or not strictly business, but who really cares? Isn't this how people communicate and build work relationships?

Of course it is. But when instant messaging goes corporate, and it will happen in the next couple of years, our secret tool will become a capitalist tool. And while the world may be a more businesslike place, maybe even a more productive place, the fun will be over. Once again.

What do you think? Do you use IM at work? What "personal" software can't you work without? TalkBack to me! 

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