Study: 20% of IMs never sent

[Fanatic]

This is one from the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction category...

Michael Beißwenger was studying people chatting in the Multimedia Lab at the Dortmund Institute for German Language and Literature, and discovered that 20% of all instant messages are never sent. You've seen this before; you see "Bob is typing..." on the chat window status line, but nothing ever arrives.

Why do so many IMs end up never getting sent? Are we so easily distracted that we lose focus in the middle of composing a sentence? New Scientist speculates that this sort of self-editing happens in all forms of communication, including face-to-face. We think about what we're going to say, and sometimes change our mind.

After all, some things really are best left unsaid.

[Philip]

Originally Posted by Fanatic

...After all, some things really are best left unsaid.

This is quite true, because once you hit that Send button, there is no way of retracting the message. So it's always wise to think first.

[Jeff]

Come to think of it, as I was typing my reply, I backspaced to make some changes. But I still clicked "post."

I also dugg your article. Nice one, Fantatic!

IM by it's very nature is more informal than a face-to-face or even a phone conversation, and therefore more prone to interruption. IMs are mostly, but not entirely, synchronous communication. But sometimes your train of thought gets derailed.

[AwesomeSauce]

It's understandable, due to the nature of IM and our tendency to change our minds or make typos/mistakes. Even then, though: 20%? I'm a bit surprised, as that seems like a large percentage of all messages not being sent.

I guess that's just me, though.

[Hasan]

Maybe because when people are chatting, they type first and think later because they know they can always edit what they typed and in other forms of communication they think first and say it later because its a bit difficult to edit their output

[PolarBearNPR]

Actually, the IMs that I don't send usually happen because the conversation takes a turn. I'll be responding to something said before, then another subject comes up, or I'll start a new subject, but we're still on the previous one, so . . . it's just the nature of a lagged conversation that things will be dropped and not sent in that manner.

Great study tho! Many insights on human behavior can be gained from all manner of conversations - and that is really interesting stuff.

[MrEggsalad]

Originally Posted by PolarBearNPR

Actually, the IMs that I don't send usually happen because the conversation takes a turn. I'll be responding to something said before, then another subject comes up, or I'll start a new subject, but we're still on the previous one, so . . . it's just the nature of a lagged conversation that things will be dropped and not sent in that manner.

Great study tho! Many insights on human behavior can be gained from all manner of conversations - and that is really interesting stuff.

Same here, so what I was originally going to say would end up making no sense. However, I also will be talking with someone and randomly I will see Friend is typing... but then I never get a message. 20% seems like a plausible number to me.