IM I Said

David Shaw at B or Not 2B points to a relatively recent Pew Internet/American Life Project study that say teens think that "email is for older people".

The study appears to base its conculsions on behaviors of 12-to-17 year olds who favor instant messaging (IM) to talk to friends and peers while using email to talk to parents, teachers and other adults. 

Teens won't get the Neil Diamond reference above, either.  I must be an "older adult".

Logically you can assume that behavior will follow as kids in that age group begin joining the workforce in 2010.  If not sooner.  Certainly many adults in tech fields have been  posting their IM address(es) right in their email signatures and v-cards for several years. 

Last year Radicati Group released a survey that indicated about half of corporations they surveyed used IMs, mostly for collaboration, but only half of those were using corporate systems with the balance using public IM systems.  So IMs certainly have traction in B2B communications with room to grow.

There are already ad models that work with IMs, although these are more often than not consumer ads sold across the public IM networks rather than contextual ads.  It remains to be seen whether there is B2B potential for IM advertising or whether it's even possible to create contextual ads on the fly given the nature of the medium.

I would think one appropriate model would be for each individual user to create and/or subscribe to their own advertising choice, thus becoming individual product evangelist agents or something to that effect.  That would mean every time you IM someone, you're sending a message about your show or conference similar to an email sig.  I don't know if that's a possibility right now... but I imagine someone out there will tell me if it is.

Regardless, IMs are something you should note since their usage will only increase. 

I can't pretend to be an expert on IMs since I stopped using them back in 1997 before many of today's standard IM features were added.  At the time I didn't want to be bothered by people who thought I was their 'buddy' when I never asked to be.  But I have to get back up to speed in time for IAEM since I'm hoping to use IMs for a backchannel in the session I'm moderating.  We'll see.

Comments

[RichW]

Thanks for the catch. Some days everything just seems to become one big blob of info.

Look at it this way, when I think "David", I think "Gammel"... connected brands!

[David Gammel]

I think you cited the wrong David up there. :)