One has the expectation of an almost immediate response, while the other has the expectation to be entirely ignored until someone brings it up in a meeting a month later
Yea, but which one is which?
It is the first type when I send it, the second type when I receive it.
One of them I can ignore at my leisure, the other one I have to ignore striaght away.
In person/phone - I need answer now regardless of what you are doing.
IM - I need an answer as soon as you have a spare second.
Email - I need a response today or tomorrow.
IM is worse at searchability and retention (as implemented where I work.)
Email is worse for synchronous communication collaboration.
So how do these faults affect how you use them?
I tend to communicate with people I know, trust, and like via IM
I tend to communicate with everyone else via email
I’m the BI guy on my company, and everytime someone new come in it ask me via chat the address from the different BI dashboards and I always ask them to bookmark the pages and don’t rely on the chat history because for corporate policies it’s auto delete ever so and so.
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Imagine having three independent IM type systems that one is expected to keep on top of at the same time. Ugh.
Thankfully, that nightmare is finally over and we are back to one.
I get it but I don’t. If I am on the factory floor and need someone to be where I am the IM is the best way. If I call they could be away from their desk or not in a position to get a phone call. If I email it might not get their attention.
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For me, I’d rather not set the expectation that people can text me. I’d rather that conversation happen in IM.
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I rarely say “Per my previous IM…”
… yet.
But IM gives you the pleasure of “replying” with a dot to a previous message you sent to bring it to their attention :)
It works in email too, but still makes the dot sender an asshole.
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The level of seriousness. IM is just a bit more than casual, email is forever.
Work IM logs every message, so you still need to talk to the jury.
The biggest remaining difference is that email works cross company.
That is changing with Teams becoming more and more default.
Unless it’s an open protocol behind it, it will never completely replace email. There will always be a Slack / Google Chat willing to take some market share and force people to still maintain email accounts.
I’m not saying it will replace email.
They’re the same :P
