A piece in today's Wall Street Journal takes a look at the growing popularity of instant messaging as a means of communication at work. As the Journal puts it, "Instant messaging is invading and changing the workplace. Employees started to sneak instant messaging into the office in the late 1990s, but now more companies are endorsing it. Faster and more casual than email, instant messaging can foster broader collaboration among employees even as it further blurs the boundaries between work and life."
Those of us who work for BloggingStocks are in constant communication via AOL Instant Messenger (Full Disclosure: BloggingStocks is owned by AOL): We discuss story ideas, the markets, and chat. Instant messaging has built a sense of camaraderie and closeness among people working thousands of miles apart that frankly never would have developed through more traditional lines of communication.
Several experts quoted in the piece predict that instant messaging at work will grow rapidly in popularity: Currently about 1/3 of workers IM at work, often without the knowledge of their bosses, but one expert believes that it will become the dominant method of communication in the workplace.
As well it should.
Retailers can't wait for Black Friday, open Thursday
Tiffany's serves up solid quarterly earnings
Cramer on BloggingStocks: This bullish retail story looks like a good fit 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-26-2007 @ 4:07PM
Katherine said...
Regarding the story by Carola Mamberto headlined “Instant Messaging Invades the Office” in the July 24, 2007 edition of The Wall Street Journal, there’s a story behind the story. Carola Mamberto failed to attribute any of the material to Evan Rosen, a blogger and author of two books on collaboration including The Culture of Collaboration http://www.thecultureofcollaboration.com
which our company published. Evan developed and proposed the story on how IM is changing workplace dynamics to The Wall Street Journal, and he provided much source material to Carola Mamberto including pre-qualified company contacts and a copy of his new book.
Mamberto interviewed Evan extensively face-to-face about IM and collaboration, and 3 out of 4 of the company examples in the story came from Evan—SAS, Constellation Energy and Industrial Light & Magic. In fact, Evan writes about how SAS and Industrial Light & Magic use IM in his book! An account of how IM is impacting workplace dynamics at SAS replete with quotes from CIO Suzanne Gordon appeared in a book spin-off story by Evan in the January 4, 2007 issue of NetworkWorld. Here’s the link:
http://www.networkworld.com/research/2007/010807-collaboration.html
Did Carola Mamberto attribute any of the material to Evan or quote him? No. Instead, she quoted two people affiliated with east coast universities. These so-called experts have done little or no work on real-time collaboration or IM.
Why should anybody care that The Wall Street Journal burned our author? Well, this is all too common with old media outlets. Rather than give credit to people who are the real authorities, these bastions of journalism prefer to appropriate ideas without attribution and then round up the usual suspects or people with certain approved affiliations for "big-picture quotes." This is exactly why the blogosphere is giving old media a run for its money. Bloggers and podcasters can disseminate information directly without old media filtering, appropriating, or failing to attribute their material. It’s no wonder that old media readership is declining and the business model is in trouble. As old media outlets struggle to remain relevant, they are doing more gatekeeping than reporting. Information consumers increasingly prefer their information served straight up and unadulterated with the writer’s bias obvious rather than oblique.
Katherine
Red Ape Publishing
10-18-2007 @ 10:23PM
rdy4nwb said...
My friends often chat with girls he met through richsoulmate.com in the workplace. His boss found out and warned him. It's funny that his boss found himself a very sexy girl on that site later.