This brief report on IM in the workplace helps to dispell some common notions of IM activity. I wish that there was a more detailed analysis/write up available rather than this brief summary of conclusions. However, the report is interesting:

While at AT&T Labs, four colleagues and I had the opportunity to study a very large sample of monitored IM interactions—over 21,000 IM conversations involving 437 users conducted from mid-2000 to late 2001. Alan Walendowski, Steve Whittaker, Diane J. Schiano, Candace Kamm, and I analyzed the IM conversations we collected and were interested to discover that some of the most popular notions about the character, functions, and styles of IM in the workplace are mistaken. For example, contrary to prior research, we found that workplace IM is primarily used for complex, work-specific interactions, with only a portion used for the type of "quick question" or coordination activities most often mentioned in the literature. Only 28 percent of the conversations we monitored proved to be simple, single-purpose interactions, and only 31 percent focused chiefly on scheduling or coordination matters. Moreover, we found that people rarely switched from IM to a different conversation medium once discussions grew complex, as is frequently suggested in reports of IM usage.

Link courtesy of Slashdot