Making A Statement, In Absentia
from the instant-messaging-culture dept
My instant messaging product of choice is Yahoo's instant messenger, which is a bit buggy, but seems to be the most popular among my friends. It has a "status message" feature that lets you put a very short "status" next to your name, and some people I know seem to spend an awful lot of time carefully crafting and changing their status messages. Some of them are designed to inform. Some of them play off of others' messages (which can get confusing if you don't have all the associated people on your buddy list), and some are clearly designed to get a reaction or a response. However, I've never seen anyone talking about the whole "status message culture" until this NY Times article that focuses on how college students view their AOL instant messenger "Away Messages" as being a very important part of their personality. Some students spend hours reading all their friends' away messages - and there's something of an art to people trying to come up with good or entertaining away messages. Of course, I think Yahoo's implementation has AOL's beat, here, since with Yahoo you can see the status messages just by looking at your buddy list. AIM requires you to click on each friend's name, which seems time consuming. Still, it's yet another aspect of instant messaging culture, and how "presence" info can change how you interact with others in ways you might not have imagined.
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Knowing that someone is probably there is useful, in that IM is supposed to be this relatively real-time thing. That person can still choose not to answer.
Brandon
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I think that aspect can be pretty powerful.
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