April 26, 2004

Online Chatting Is a Dumb Waste of Time

I've installed MSN Messenger on my PC but hardly use it. Email is what I prefer as, I find text chat is just too interruptive. When someone sends you a text message they expect an instant reply.

I've written about instant messenging in the past and while it CAN be a great tool, it might not be for everyone nor every company.

John C. Dvorak writes in an ABC News commentary I hate the IMs (instant messages), the paging, the PMs (personal messages), the private chats, the open chats, the IRC, AIM, ICQ, and MSN Messenger. I particularly despise the small talk that is an important part of chat, and I loathe all the phone SMS chatting and its entire infrastructure.

There are a lot of good reasons to hate chatting. You can hate it because it doesn't work right. You can hate it because people pester you. You can hate it because you can't pester the people you want to pester when you want to pester them. You can hate it because within the casual chatting environments most people are phonies or posers. You can hate it in the business environment because you are likely being spied on in casual chat. And you can hate it because it is just plain dumb. (full story)

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