If you’re one of the few people that grace my Adium contact list pretending to be away, you should have observed it so far: I gave up on IM. I just had to.
It wasn’t that hard, I just stopped using this means of communication. Nowadays, I mainly use Twitter and e-mail to get in touch with people, the former more so than the latter. OK, I do use IM, but just for intranet purposes at work, using our homemade Pathfinder Instant Messenger. And that’s about it.
Why, I can hear you ask. I’ll tell you why. Because it’s so damn time-consuming I couldn’t do anything with Adium in the background anymore. It was the feeling that I cheated on people and made them feel bad when I wasn’t promptly replying to their messages. That’s why I found Twitter so liberating: noone expects you to be there and reply to every given moment. Well, noone should anyway.
So at first was productivity. I found myself more productive and efficient while at home. I wrote more, designed more and learned more. I learned to manage Twitter distractions and incorporate it in my workflow without serious drawbacks. And everything was fine for a while.
But I lacked something, and that was real-time human communication. And for that, I decided to take my Friday (traditionally at home) nights on IM. Just to keep in touch with friends and add to the overall relaxing feeling. Some light gossip, some link exchanging and that’s it. You give a little but you gain a sense of social satisfaction.
So I was wondering, am I the only one that declared IM bankruptcy? Surely there are more of you that just stopped using it at some point.
Do you still keep tabs on IM friends by logging in every once in a while? Or you just use Twitter and Facebook to communicate with people?
Do share your opinions in the comments.
6 comments on this post
Giorgos Keramidas #1
22.May.09
I’ve almost declared IM bankruptcy too, and yet Facebook is the one place that managed to make messaging more annoying than IRC or MSN, AIM, Yahoo, etc.
These days I am leaning towards deleting all IM accounts except those that let me relax a bit with 3-4 good friends. “Email should be enough for everyone” (famous last words)
adamo #2
22.May.09
As you probably remember, I declared total IM bankruptcy back in 2006 for much the same reasons.
Nick Andrik #3
22.May.09
I am quite IM-aholic and I don’t see it changing soon. When I am really busy I just disconnect from my faithful Pidgin or I just put Busy. People knowing me should notice that Busy state is going there so rarely that when it happens it must be serious. Also, away is put in automatic way to state the obvious.
Just to give you an idea of the “addiction”: I guess I am one of the few people that have used Pidgin (previously know as Gaim) for the last 5+ years in 4+ different operating systems and in 10+ different computers with the same (getting occasionally updated) configuration.
Also, before that, finger/talk and IRC would fill the gap. I guess there is no hope for my IM habits
PS: Please ping me when replying (you can use IM
)
lexx #4
22.May.09
I only use skype and vent for gaming, no IM
Lea Verou #5
22.May.09
I’m a Live Messenger addict and I agree that it’s really time consuming. However, I have managed to use it far less than before by rarely initiating conversations myself and by having a “busy” status at all times, so that people are a bit hesitant to initiate a conversation themselves.
Jim Myhrberg #6
22.May.09
I recently decided to “dump” IM networks as well. But I took a different approach. Namely, I’m trying to keep the cake, but also eat it at the same time.
I posted about it here: http://jimeh.me/blog/2010/02/10/was-i-really-that-social/