Is Instant-Messaging just for the under-30 crowd?  Think
again
.  Used with discipline (read: with sensitivity to cultural considerations), and once it grows up
in terms of:

  • interoperability across platforms (AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft),
  • archiving, and
  • security

it may be just one of any number of media people use to communicate
depending on what they’re otherwise doing, the urgency of the communication,
and their "degrees of intimacy"—meaning one partner replies
to another partner as fast as to a spouse.  But that’s another
column.

Does your firm currently ban it?  Perhaps a re-think is in order.
  Restrict it?  How and why?   It will soon be time
for a conscious and considered IM policy, if it’s not already;  IM
is not going away, and like many other aspects of the technology arms
race, it will only become more functional and powerful over time.

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