Usefulness of instant messaging among young users: Social vs. work perspective

Instant messaging (IM) was introduced in 1996. In the past few years, the majority of IM users have been teenagers. As the young IM users gradually enter the workforce, it is likely that their familiarity with IM will increase its acceptance as a business application. Consequently, the potential impact of IM in the workplace has become an important organizational issue. This study investigated the usefulness of IM for both social and work-related uses from young users' perspectives. A survey of over 500 college-age IM users was conducted. The survey data were used to identify factors that were important to the usefulness of IM. The results showed that young users correlated different features of IM with different aspects of usefulness. The ability to facilitate friendship development and personalized communication was viewed as an important feature for the social use of IM; for work-related uses, information richness and information volume were deemed as more desirable features for IM. The findings can be used as a foundation for future studies using knowledge workers in the workplace.