Instant Messaging Etiquette

Anne Zelenka makes a tongue-in-cheek diatribe about the possibilities for rudeness inherent in instant messaging use. In the following, I counter her peeved gripes with recommendations of the basic understanding that all users need to adopt to avoid causing offense, which is the basis for all etiquette.

[blockquoted excerpts from How to Annoy People Using Instant Messaging]

Remember that instant messaging is synchronous, intrusive, and often tedious: in other words, an ideal platform for making a pest of yourself.

Disregard any presence indicators your colleagues use such as busy or away. Your needs are more important than anyone else’s and you know that some people regularly set their IM status to busy or away even when they’re working on unimportant stuff. Bonus: if you catch someone at the computer when she says she’s away, berate her for it. She needs to set her presence indicators according to your needs not her own.

It helps everyone involved if all IM users update their status indicators appropriately, for example, "in a meeting" sends a clear message of what your situation is, and is much better than a simple "online" or "available".

Never check whether a person has time to chat. If he’s online and reachable, he’s all yours! In particular, make sure you never ask about someone’s availability for a work-related chat at these special times of day: in the late afternoon, when he might be trying to finish his work so he can go home; early in the morning, when he might be taking advantage of quiet time to be productive; and the middle of the night, when, if he’s on the computer at all, he’s probably not thinking about work.

It is always appropriate to ignore IM. So long as all parties understand that convention, no one is upset when someone is simply too busy to respond, even if online. It is advisable to ask someone if they have time to chat, and to suggest how long the interchange may take: "Hi. Do you have a few minutes for a question?", for example.

Don’t set your own presence indicators when you’re busy or away from the computer. That way people trying to get a quick answer from you will feel first hopeful and then frustrated. Long term, you can utterly confuse the people you work with by setting one IM account to “busy,” one to “away,” and one to “available,” making them into random noise. Then, when someone IMs you on the “available” account, chew him out for bothering you when you’ve got something important to do.

As I mentioned before, IMs can always be ignored, so people shouldn't get their feelings hurt if someone theoretically available really isn't, or doesn't want to be.

Don’t pause to give the person a chance to respond. Stream-of-your-own-consciousness is a great way to show that you matter and your conversational partner doesn’t. Ask a question, and then ask another, or answer it yourself. Type each sentence with a “…” after it so you can indicate that you have more (and more… and more…) to say.

It is very easy to "talk over" others in IM. It can lead to confusion, and impart a sense of impoliteness. But it isn't always the case that one IM 'stroke' from one person should always be countered by a 'stroke' from the other in a lockstep fashion.

But when you do pause, expect instantaneous replies. When someone is IM’ing with you, she should only be IM’ing with you, not doing anything else. You should expect her to close down all other chats, turn away completely from whatever she was doing, and give you her full attention.

People are multitasking more and more, especially those who IM a lot. Expect it, and don't be upset when pauses are of uneven length. Sometimes it seems more like communication by postcard.

Consider instant messaging as a way of getting personal therapy. This works especially well with your busiest and most driven associates. It’s good for them to help another. They need to be exposed to the reality of the human condition with all its angst and ennui. Don’t hold your pain inside–instant messaging equals instant catharsis. There. Don’t you feel better now?

I reserve my comments on this one, except to note that some studies have suggested that people often find it easier to deal with painful subjects by IM rather than f2f, so, perhaps this use should be encouraged.

Don’t ever use correct capitalization or punctuation. ur 2 kewl 4 dat! You feel comfortable with the brave new world of IM, why shouldn’t everyone else? Shift keys are for sissies.

A bit generational here, Anne. And, especially when using cell phones or other mobiles, shortened spelling can be a lifesaver.

Expect that IM conversations will always be like phone conversations, with a definite goodbye at the end. If your colleague hasn’t signed off, that means the discussion is still going, so keep on typing messages even if you’ve found out what you need to know. Don’t notice when the pauses between your entries and the responses get longer and longer and longer. The longer you keep the session going, the more likely you are to annoy.

With many of the folks I IM with frequently, I never close the chat window. I simply pick up the conversation later in the day. In a sense, the dialogue never ends.

Send large files without asking whether it’s okay. You know better than anyone what people need. Don’t have any qualms about using up other people’s download bandwidth and hard drive space.

I agree. Ask before sending files.

Sprinkle emoticons liberally into your messages. One in a sentence is good, two is better, three provides maximum distraction and visual harassment. Don’t know all the ones you can use? Bookmark the one you need: AOL, GTalk, MSN, and Yahoo.

I don't use emoticons much, but its just another shorthand, not something pernicious.

Try out all the abbreviations you can think of. Learn new ones every day, so you can be as compact and opaque in your communication as possible. Don’t stick with the ones everyone knows–lol (”laughing out loud”), brb (”be right back”), and np (”no problem”). Try out some new ones, especially on people you know are likely to be unfamiliar with them. How about ptmm (”please tell me more”) or wdalyic (”who died and left you in charge”) or issygti (”I’m so sure you get the idea”)?

Abbreviations can be confusing to the non-initiate, but also a time saver when obvious.

There are a number of other points of IM etiquette that Anne didn't touch on:

• Don't blog personal conversations (including IM) without asking.
• Let people IMing with you know if you are in a public place.
• Turn off all the IM noises when working in an open office or in a meeting.
• It is appropriate to keep IM open in a meeting, so that people can reach you for urgent or critical issues without interrupting the meeting, but it isn't appropriate to IM endlessly in that context.

I did some work on a report about IM etiquette for a shall-not-be-named-client a few years ago that was defanged during the process, and what I wrote never saw the light of day. Here's an excerpt from a draft that was a little to Stowe-ish to meet the desires of the client:

Instant messaging has grown up. What was once just a toy for teenagers is rapidly becoming a mission-critical tool for business people to communicate more easily, and much, much more quickly. There are many factors that are propelling instant messaging into broad use in the business context: an increasingly mobile workforce, geographically distributed teams, and the widespread adoption of wireless devices. These are collectively spurring the uptake of synchronous, real-time collaboration tools by information workers. Perhaps more than any other single factor, the rapid expansion of instant messaging is being driven by the power of presence: the constantly updated status information linked to every user that tells us whether our instant messaging contacts are online, and available to chat.

At the same time, there are a host of questions that must be addressed as this innovative communication medium is adopted into the business setting. In a sense, the protocols for all communication media are very much alike, and as a result, many of the aspects of productive instant messaging (IM) use will follow the norms already in place for email, web conferencing, telephone, and other indirect and electronic forms of communication. However, IM is unique enough that it warrants this in-depth exploration of the emerging best (and perhaps worst) practices for its application.

“IM Etiquette” is perhaps too frivolous a characterization for what we are hoping to achieve, and perhaps suggests an obsessive regulation of social minutiae. We are seeking to provide a practical, situation-by-situation guide to IM use that addresses the interpersonal dimension that surrounds the use of this innovative communication medium, not merely an over-generalized list of dos and don’ts. As a result, we will motivate our recommendations with something more than social convention, exploring both the business value and ethical choices underlying IM’s expanding role in the enterprise.

Download the free report, Enterprise Instant Messaging: Ethics, Etiquette, and Best Practices.

tags : instant messaging instant messaging ettiquette anne zelenka

Comments

[Eric]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony

[lilrabbit129]

I agree, IM has grown up. We use it at work instead of phones for quick questions. It's much more instantaneous than an email and more convenient than walking over.

[Bill]

It's interesting. I've used IM extensively for the last 3 years to communicate with a number of co-workers. I work remotely, so it is either IM or phone. I don't like being on the phone because it is highly intrusive.

I find that there are those that 'get it' and those that don't. Unfortunately, it appears that the 'novelty' of this form of communication has worn off, and the majority of my co-workers have become IM-lazy (as I call it).

It has become close to impossible to get work related information from them and misunderstandings have become commonplace.

I really shouldn't blame IM for all these things, because it seems like e-mail has been following the same trend. My co-workers only read the first line of any email and delete it.

I think that the whole communication issue is more than just an 'etiquette' of one form or another (ie IM or e-mail) but an understanding between 2 people on how to communicate. Working remotely requires this. And some people just can't seem to deal with this fact.

It is sad, that I work for a major ISP in the US, but company policy states that remote workers are not allowed. I happen to be one of 3 people who were not axed when this policy went into affect 2 years ago, because the 3 of us were to valuable to let go. Yet this communication issue is eroding that edge to a point when I wonder if today I'll be receiving a pink slip.

Bill

[Geoff]

I, personally, am able to (and frequently do) hold multi-threaded conversations, which IM is particularly good at.

[Ythan]

You expertly distill a humorous and entertaining article down to a few dry bullet points. Great work!

[ron]

The Snooggie instant messenger uses a different approach, it is not based on a personal contact list, but is based on a community link.

http://www.snooggie.com

[Bri]

I agree that it is very unrealistic to expect those who are instant messaging to only have one chat going at a time. Instant messaging is a convenient communication tool used to get things done quick and efficiently. What's wrong with talking to muliple parties at once??

[Megan]

This was a nice, detailed overview of IM politeness. I still find that people get mad at me if I don't respond to an IM. Everyone who knows me, knows that I am a very busy person, and just chatting about the day can really affect what I get done. I hope there is a blog like this for people in different countries. They are always asking me asl, and it is non stop. Over a third of my buddy list is blocked people, who won't stop contacting me.