Comment Articles

Don't make IM wear a suit

David Coursey AnchorDesk

Published: 06 Mar 2003 16:54 GMT

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.

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 your other colleagues, 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.

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."