New York Times: I.M. Generation Is Changing the Way Business Talks

April 5 2006

As I've been saying, voicemail is dead.  Sun's Tim Bray even says internal e-mail is dead (I don't agree at all -- not in a global company where people are asychronously available...does Tim not sleep?).  

Still, instant messaging is taking over.

Now a generation of office workers who grew up with instant messaging has gained control. They have made I.M. the new black, the latest trend in information technology. Along the way, they have changed how the corporate world converses and have built a series of new communication applications.
Hmm, I thought Yellow was the new black...

The article includes coverage of Lotus Sametime customers such as Intellicare:
"One of our nurses answers the phone when you call your doctor in the middle of the night, and 97 percent of our nurses work from home," said Jeff Forbes, chief information officer. "The nurse can fire off an I.M. to an expert and get a response back without having to interrupt your call."
In conclusion, the Times says it, too:
[C]orporations are building new applications on top of instant messaging, taking advantage of the fact that private I.M. networks are insulated from the outside world. The process is reminiscent of when corporate intranets were first built, in the mid-1990's. These private areas on the Web were created as applications on top of the Web protocols.

All of which means the end could be near for business voice mail, as more and more companies adopt instant messaging.
I'm coming thisclose to changing my IBM voicemail greeting to say "don't bother leaving me a message here, I only check it once a week.  Need me?  E-mail, IM, or call my mobile."

Link: New York Times: I.M. Generation Is Changing the Way Business Talks >

Ed Brill | Category:  In the news  Add/View Comments [20]

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  1. 1  Dan the-technocrat.blogspot.com | 4/5/2006 9:37:09 AM

    I'd agree with IM replacing local internal email...except for the cc-my-boss-everything-i-send-you-so-you-know-i-mean-business folks...

    But aside from that, I find internal IM an easy (and productivity-ensuring) replacement for not only the one-word emails, but also for the postit-note-on-the-monitor (or note-on-the-chair)

    (what was that, 15 dashes?)

  1. 2  Declan Lynch www.qtzar.com | 4/5/2006 10:25:33 AM

    I've always had my voicemail message saying 'For a quicker reply please email me at..'

    I do think that IM can become 'Interuptive Messaging' when it is first rolled out to a company but eventually users will start using it correctly when looking for 'expert' style input on something quickly while going back to emails on the not so urgent stuff.

    With Notes 7 being able to store your SameTime chats in the mailfile you instantly have a personal record of your chats which always satisfies the 'cc-the-boss' type people, they can forward on important chats where decisions have been made etc.

  1. 3  Charles Robinson  | 4/5/2006 10:38:46 AM

    We're pretty spread out, with 15 locations in 6 different states and across two time zones. Using IM to keep in communication reduces telephone expenses and allows people who spend a lot of time on the phone to be multitask more easily.

    The next thing I'll be working on is a concept I saw Rob Novak demonstrate a Lotusphere. He called it "content awareness", the idea being that workflow can be driven through Sametime rather than e-mail. When a workflow process hits a certain point a Sametime bot notifies people with the information rather than sending an e-mail. This makes it closer to realtime and doesn't clog up e-mail with status notifications.

  1. 4  Rob McDonagh www.CaptainOblivious.com | 4/5/2006 11:19:58 AM

    One day waaaaay back in the 90's, my CIO and I had a meeting in Cambridge with one of Lotus' Java experts (back in the BeanMachine days). He was a very smart guy, obviously. And his voice mail message said, "Alex likes email." Period, end of message. I loved it, and have always been jealous that he was able to get away with it.

  1. 5  Chris Doig chrisdoig.net | 4/5/2006 11:24:54 AM

    So, Ed, when are we going to see something that seamlessly merges email and IM? Why must I switch between two clients, when one can do both?

  1. 6  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 4/5/2006 11:28:10 AM

    @5 I'm confused, we integrated instant messaging into Notes in 6.5 and above. As Declan points out in #2 above, substantial improvements in 7.0 make the experience even more seamless.

  1. 7  Mike "5 Things Wrong with SharePoint" Drips http://forevervoyaging.blogspot.com | 4/5/2006 11:52:47 AM

    IM implementation is still not there in many of the large corporations that I have consulted to. Their IT departments seem to view IM as the technical version of devil worship. I don't know why, perhaps their IT staffs are overworked, lazy or had bad childhoods.

    I do see IM more frequently in small and mid-sized companies, but there again, it's often just not allowed.

  1. 8  Steven Joseph  | 4/5/2006 12:44:43 PM

    So Ed was there someting on page 1 of the story you did not want us to see?

    As far as VM, we integrated ours into Notes Mail back in R4, so it is there in your InBox with the rest of your email. I guess you won't have much use for the click to talk VOIP options in 7.5?

    @3, We're always looking for a good place to put a STbot, but what do you do to notify the person if they are offline?

  1. 9  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 4/5/2006 1:04:12 PM

    Sorry, just grabbed the link from the last page I was reading.

    VoIP is a different thing. I use that. I just don't use voicemail.

  1. 10  Chris Doig chrisdoig.net | 4/5/2006 2:10:03 PM

    @6: Ed, what I meant was... If I want to contact you, why must I choose between opening my email client, or my IM client? Why should there be two clients? Why not one client for both? (Taking that a bit further, why not include VOIP and video in the same client as well).

    The idea is that I want to communicate with you, I don't want to think about which tool to use - I want the tool to come automatically from the context. And I want to change seamlessly from one to another, e.g. if you are unavailable on IM, changing to an email is totally transparent to me. Or, if I am sending you an email, and realize that I need something more interactive to resolve the problem, I can seamlessly change to IM mode (without retyping anything)

  1. 11  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 4/5/2006 2:10:18 PM

    @8 - simple. Just integrate Sametime and Blackberry - and that person is always available to receive IM...

    ---* Bill

  1. 12  Bob Balfe http://balfes.net/blog | 4/5/2006 2:45:30 PM

    I agree about email moving to IM, that is why I save all of my chat transcripts. My transcripts folder looks like my Sent view in Notes!

    Also, with Sametime 7.5 and the built in spell checking we will be seeing much cleaner IM's coming over. :)

  1. 13  Tim Latta  | 4/5/2006 3:06:25 PM

    @11 - Been done already. Using it now.

  1. 14  Paul Robichaux http://www.e2ksecurity.com | 4/5/2006 4:31:00 PM

    @10: Outlook and Office Communicator both do this now. VoIP, IM, RTC, and email, all together.

  1. 15  Rob Ingram  | 4/5/2006 8:32:59 PM

    @14 - sorry Outlook plus Communicator - thats still 2 very different clients to chose from.

    Might I suggest Activities is a key part of the answer. Why?

    1)It blends the different message data types into one communication thread (independent of the tool used to create them - email, IM, docs, eventually voice, etc.)

    2) It allows you to store the important conversations(just like saved chats)and

    3) You can share or publish the entire thread to new participants if and when you chose.

  1. 16  Nathan T. Freeman  | 4/6/2006 2:44:18 AM

    @10 - I'm trying to picture the interface for this, because the style of communication you use will differ greatly depending on your expectation of response. If I'm going to start communication via IM, I'd probably type a simple "Hello, got a minute?" and wait for a reply before continuing. But an email will basically layout everything I need to say in one go. The STYLE of communication is necessarily different.

    What you need to have is a single point of contact reference that tells you what form of communication is available. And Notes presence awareness does a pretty good job of that. Yes, it could be better -- ultimately it should be a single contact list, whether IM or personal address book or corporate directory or phone book, where a context-menu (right-click or something like it) offers me modes that are available. Notes gets CLOSE to that now, and the kind of interface we're seeing in Hannover seems to point towards that result in the future.

    But no matter what, you DO have to care about whether your communication is going to be written or verbal (I IM and read email all the time while on the phone, and I'm not unusual), and whether it's synchronous or asynchronous before you even begin. It's a radical shift in mode. The best a system can provide is awareness of the available modes at the initiation point.

  1. 17  Charles Robinson  | 4/6/2006 12:06:12 PM

    @8 - re: Sametime "content awareness" - Mobile users aren't part of most of our workflow. If they are I'll just notify them in the bot until they go into the record and mark that the've read it or something. I haven't done anything with Sametime yet other than curse it daily for the intrusions. ;)

  1. 18  Steven Joseph  | 4/6/2006 3:05:01 PM

    @17 & 11) Not really taking about mobile users. Offline as in not logged in...If you notify someone via IM to take action on a pending task, how do they get notified if they are not in IM? Does the bot recognize that they are not online and use email instead?

  1. 19  Carl Tyler http://www.iminstant.com | 4/7/2006 6:38:08 AM

    @18 if they are logged off, you ensure your code checks their state. Some workflow may say ok this is urgent and this needs signing, who is next in the approval chain I will try them.

    Or the workflow acknowledges they are not online and emails them. Most systems like this we have setup use a combination of both. IM delivery is not guaranteed, so email is also a good idea. IM is just another option.

  1. 20  Dovid  | 4/7/2006 6:23:08 PM

    I gave up on my office phone altogether a while ago.

    One of the problems of IM v. e-Mail is that even with persistent chat records, e-Mail has a FLOW PERMANENCE, and IM is SCATTERED. Is that a new IM conversation I am beginning, or a continuation of the old one? With e-Mail, unless I usually have multiple threads with the saem personn active, and it is possible to follow it all.

    IM's are a sometimes superior phone call. E-Mails are still a vastly superior memo. I use IM more than e-Mail now, but I know when to use my e-Mail and not chat... either because it is NOT a conversation, or does not matter whether I hear back now or later, or because I WANT THE OTHER GUY TO SPEND TIME ANSWERINg and not dash off a one-liner.

    Learnto use the right tool at the right time, please.

    (I still thin there are better ways of integrating IM and e-Mail. Notes still treats it as two UIs for the most part, with presence and mail-to-IM link the only binders. Blackberry treats IM as e-Mail -- each sentence is line a new message. Somewhere in between would be useful.)