AP-AOL Instant Messaging Trends Survey: Email is Dead

[Jeff]

Many IM users are spending time instant messaging from their cell phones, according to the second annual AP-AOL Instant Messaging Trends Survey.

The survey, which examined instant messaging trends and usage habits among 1,246 IM users, revealed that 25 percent of respondents send IMs from their cell phones, including one in three (32 percent) teens.

The proliferation of cell phones with full keyboards has made it easier to send mobile instant messages. All of the major instant messaging services also let users have their instant messages forwarded directly to their cell phones when they're on-the-go. In addition, IM users are instant messaging from within their social networking profiles.

Instant messaging is not only popular at home and on-the-go, but workplace use is becoming commonplace. More than one in four (27 percent) users say they use instant messaging at work. Further, half of at-work IM users say that instant messaging makes them more productive at work, a 25 percent increase over last year.

"Instant messaging has made its way into so many areas of our lives and we can now take our buddies with us wherever we go. Whether on our mobile phones, our social profiles or on the desktop at work, our friends, family and co-workers are right there letting us know when they're free for a question or just to chat," said David Liu, Senior Vice President, AOL. "This survey also found that instant messaging is truly helping people become more productive and better manage their relationships wherever they may be."

Top-line survey findings among users of instant messaging include:

• More than half (55 percent) of teen IM users have used instant messaging to get help with their homework. This is a 17 percent increase over last year. Meanwhile, 22 percent of teens say they have sent an IM to ask for or accept a date.
• Forty-three percent of teen IM users say they have used instant messaging to say something they would not say to someone in person. Teenage girls are more likely than boys to do so. Nearly half of teenage girls surveyed have used instant messaging to say something they would not say in person, compared with just over a third of teenage boys.
• Teens today are more likely to upload photos (42 percent in 2007 vs. 34 percent in 2006) while instant messaging. They are less likely to conduct online research for school (57 percent vs. 63 percent) or update their blog or social profile (33 percent vs. 42 percent) while sending IMs.
• Nearly three in four teens (70 percent) and one in four adults (24 percent) send more instant messages than emails.
• Multi-tasking remains very popular, as IM users tend to engage in multiple online activities while sending instant messages. Checking email is the most popular activity among eight in ten adult and teen IM users. After email, adult IM users most often conduct online searches (49 percent), while teens say they like to research homework assignments online (57 percent).
• Nearly four in five (79 percent) at-work IM users say they have used instant messaging in the office to take care of personal matters. One in five (19 percent) IM users say they send more instant messages than emails to their co-workers and colleagues.

Survey Methodology

Interviewing for the AP-AOL Instant Messaging Trends Survey was conducted online by Knowledge Networks among a national sample of 1,246 instant messaging users, including 836 adults aged 19 and older and 410 teens aged 13-18. Interviews were conducted October 25 through November 4. Users of any instant messaging service were eligible to complete the survey. Members of the Knowledge Networks internet panel were recruited by telephone polling methods, and panelists who were not online were provided with Internet access. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.3 percentage points for adults and 6 percentage points for teens.

[Fanatic]

Email is definitely dying. It's been choked to death by spam. As this survey shows, most of use prefer IM to email (well, except for the older generations).

I think there MIGHT still be some hope for email though.

What Gmail has done introduced some changes to the email paradigm. They have pretty friggen good spam detection, so I don't even see most of that crap. Replies are automatically "threaded" much like discussions in a forum at BigBlueBall. You get lots of space so you don't NEED to delete stuff (although I archive regularly). The search functionality makes it easy to find past conversations. AND it integrates nicely with Google Chat, storing my chat logs right next to my email conversations.

That's all a good start, but apparently both Google and Yahoo are looking at ways to improve. A LOT of people are doing more of the communication with their friends on MySpace, Facebook or whatever flavour of social network is popular in your particular corner of the world.

Saul Hansell of the New York Times wrote a great article that looks at what Google and Yahoo have in store for email in the future. Basically, they already know who your contacts are, and who you email most often. This forms the basis for a TRUE social network, where the strength of the connections is readily apparent.

So imagine... your inbox could automatically sort things by importance to you (based on the importance of your relationship to the sender). I can see this going even further. Imagine that if I'm at work, email from my co-workers shows up high in my inbox. When I'm logged on from home one the weekend, it shows up lower. Take presence and location awareness, strength of connections and context, mix in instant messaging, VoIP (you can already do voice mail in Gmail) and you've got a kick-ass communication platform.

So just maybe email isn't quite dead yet.

[Jeff]

I'm see a convergence of social networking, online presence, instant messaging, email and other communication technologies.

I recently read about a proposal for Instant Syndicating Standard (ISS) that might help resolve some of this. It was part of Nick Vidal's post-grad thesis and he also got funding through Google's Summer of Code project.

Maybe soon, "email" won't be so important; instead, we'll have our contact lists and be able to connect with them in whatever way makes sense at the moment (phone, SMS, IM, email, etc.), with everything indexed and controlled through a common interface (the inbox?) and available from any device (PC, iPhone, etc.).

[ahoier]

e-mail is slowly dieing, but I cant see it ever totally dieing...business-folk use it a lot :)

But yea, I can see what the article means.....my siblings are constantly on AIM/MySpace/etc...chatting away, though they do have a couple friends whose parents won't allow them MySpace accounts....well, you can guess where those e-mail priorities are set :).....very low.....top priority being IM/MySpace friends....