Instant Messenger Reflections
26 01 2008In college instant messenger was ubiquitous. At three a.m. my buddy list was buzzing with life. I would have three instant messenger windows open at once. In one window I would be studying for calculus with a friend, in another window providing relationship advice and in another talking with my roommate about what food we wanted to order. Signing online was connecting to my world. Day or night I was never alone.
Some of the best conversations happened on instant messenger during finals. The more stressed out people became the more they wanted to confide online. We often shared ideas and feelings we would never say in person. Many good friendships and relationships started and ended in this way.
I haven’t been able to recreate this environment outside of college. While I have have several hundred friends on Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, I have nowhere near the interaction of instant messenger several years ago. It’s possible that I am confusing technology for time period. If I were in college right now maybe Twitter and Facebook would provide just as opportunity as instant messenger. Or perhaps not. And for the most part, I’ve found, speaking on Twitter is like having a conversation at a concert with someone who is half listening and can half hear you.
Skype provides me with a reason to believe that there is something to my observation. I’ve seen many business people who work for international companies form unusually close relationships with the coworkers over Skype. I think much of this is in part to that fact that they know that they nearly always has a group of people they can speak with at any time of the night or day.
Have you experienced a change in your social group because of a change in technology? I’d love to hear your story.
I wonder is this new bit of code might help make (at least one of) these new technologies a bit more personal, focussed and manageable:
http://mashable.com/2008/01/28/twitter-public-timeline-prologue/
Mashable! just wrote about this code that allows you to follow a small group of twitter users and publishes the public timeline of their tweets in a separate domain.
I am currently a college student, and I have to agree that IM (in my life, known as the “high school” days) provided a much more personal connection. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and all the others are no more than email. That isn’t to say that they can’t make a good platform for communication — I find the social networking aspects of these sites to be quite amazing — but rather that they don’t.
IM provided an opportunity for one-on one dialogue that can’t be recreated through email-like systems. It also, to a certain extent, enabled emotion to be communicated with the text, narrowing the gap between IM and phone conversations.
I’m starting to ramble, so I’ll stop now… but I do agree with your point. Who knows, if Skype makes a client that isn’t such a bandwidth hog, they may entirely dominate the market, and bring IM back to the forefront of social communication online. Until then though, I’ll just have to stick with methods that aren’t banned by most school networks.
I have to agree with you. Around 1998-2001 I often chatted to many people via IM and have to say that it really was much better than these social networking sites. I don’t feel networked socially at all with these sites and find it rather disconnected. Any conversation that takes place on them feels clunky and irritating.
I think that maybe technology has stepped backwards a bit as the internet grows in popularity and people find it easier to use sites like facebook yet want to chat over IM anyway which someone defeats the point a little of these social networking sites. I spent a lot of my time just chatting to people online, having casual conversation with people from all around the world and I really enjoyed it and still long for those days.
I’m constantly struggling with the viability of technology and new ways of conversing, like social networking, as a catalyst for relationships. While I see the allure of social networks and I’ve joined my fair share it’s always a half-hearted attempt. My lack of participation always comes back to the same reason – my friends aren’t there. At least not the friends that I have close “off-line” relationships with. I’ve asked many of these friends if they join social networks, twitter, blog, etc. and I’m always met with the same blank stares. When I explain the technology the reason for not participating is always the same – between careers, family and friendships there’s just no time to add another mode of socialization, let alone maintain it. Because of that I’m inclined to say that the reason your IM days have past is because you and your social network is in a different life phase.