Commentary

IM Skyrockets, E-Mail Declines Among Young

A whopping 66 percent -- two thirds -- of "young online users" (13 to 21) send more instant messages than e-mail messages, according to a study by America Online. That's up from last year, when just 49 percent claimed to send more IMs than e-mails.

A whopping 66 percent -- two thirds -- of "young online users" (13 to 21) send more instant messages than e-mail messages, according to a study by America Online. That's up from last year, when just 49 percent claimed to send more IMs than e-mails.The important part of this is not the number. Individual e-mails are compared with individual instant "messages." IM tends to be more of a conversation, so if you spend 15 minutes chatting with a friend, that might be 75 IMs.

What is interesting, however, is the trend. Moving from one half to two thirds in just a year is extremely fast movement.


More Insights

White Papers

More >>

Reports

More >>

Webcasts

More >>

Meanwhile, Google's combination of e-mail and IM with Gmail may blur the line between the two media -- especially if the idea catches on and inspires Google's competitors to do the same.


Related Reading




Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

InformationWeek encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, InformationWeek moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. InformationWeek further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
T-Shirt Giveaway T-Shirt Giveaway: Each week we're selecting one great comment from our readers. The author of the comment will receive an InformaitonWeek Community t-shirt. So get posting!
Subscribe to RSS

Resource Links