Instant Messaging Conference Report The
Instant Messaging Conference Report
The Instant Messaging Planet Conference and Expo (“The Enterprise IM Strategies & Solutions Event”) going on in Boston yesterday and today attracted about 150 people for a lively set of discussions about moving IM into the corporate world. It presented a picture of an industry attempting to struggle out of the swamp of commoditization…with the lead commoditizer, AOL, not in attendance.
[Note: My view is doubly skewed. I am basically a populist when it comes to IM, and I only heard the morning panels, although I hung around after my keynote to talk with folks. So, this is hardly full and unbiased coverage. As if you needed to be reminded.]
The problem the attendees face is simple: Why should anyone pay for what they can get for free? Answer: Businesses should pay for it because of the features the vendors provide: security, integration with other apps, security, archiving, security, configuration for a particular set of business problems, security, the filtering of irrelevant messages, security, and security.
It’s no coincidence that as soon as IM looks like a business application, it becomes primarily about control and the reduction of information. After all, businesses literally define themselves in terms of what they control, and their control comes primarily through the selective release of information. The problem the IM industry faces is that what has made IM so massively popular among consumers is that it is uncontrolled and increases the flow of information. We’ve adopted IM because of connection but now it’s being sold to businesses in terms of control.
This led a couple of people on the first panel to deny the importance of interoperability among IM systems. One panelist said that business doesn’t want interoperability because it just means that people outside your company can bother you with interruptions. Another said: “It just enables me to IM with my kids from work, which is not very high on the business needs list.” In other words, interoperability decreases control and increases connectivity. But, as someone in the audience said, you could say the same thing about email. And, as I said in my presentation, one clear lesson of the Internet is that you make the transport layer open and put your added-value features at the edges of the network. First connect. That enables innovation and the development of added-value industries.
That ultimately is the problem I think the IM industry faces. They first have to build an industry, which you do through openness. But non- interoperability provides some short-term differentiating benefits to the IM vendors. In pursuing their short-term self-interest, they are hindering the creation of a market for the long term. And in sacrificing connection for control, they are removing from their product the very factor that has caused people spontaneously to embrace it.
Now, that’s easy enough to say if you’re a writer- consultant-speaker guy who drops in for a morning and then takes the trolley home where you can write up your high-minded critique. It gets a lot harder if you’re trying to keep your company afloat knowing that the owner of the desktop is already building IM into the operating system for free. Nevertheless, if I were a prospect, I wouldn’t even consider an enterprise IM product that didn’t begin its pitch with an explanation of how it “embraces and extends” the coming interoperability standard.
There was another disconnect between the business vision of IM and the popular view. We the People have embraced IM in large part because of buddy lists. Without buddy lists, IM would be just another opportunity to be spammed. Buddy lists constitute a person-to-person network on top of the network. A map of buddy lists in a corporation would be, in some ways, more valuable than the org chart for it would show you who is really talking with whom. Yet, there was almost no mention of buddy lists during the morning sessions … except by the two customers who talked. To the vendors (to generalize), IM looks like a way of interrupting someone you know is in her office in order to get a quick answer to a question. To the rest of us, IM looks like a way a set of buddies can stay in touch. I would have thought that businesses would be eager to capitalize on the untapped knowledge management potential of buddy lists. Instead, buddy lists apparently look like a way people can distract one another.
There’s lots of room for IM. In fact, considered simply as a messaging layer (as the guy from Jabber, the open source IM folks, suggested) it can and will show up in tons of other apps as a way of moving data from A to B. I am completely in favor of vendors making a ton of money embedding and extending IM to address every conceivable business need, from the most controlled to the most connected. Of course! But there also has to be room in business for IM of the sort that has become wildly popular already. The social network IM creates is of immense value not only to teenagers and shut-ins. Businesses run on their messy social networks. They are the source of the trust that makes working together efficient and feasible at all. They are the source of much innovation. They are the way bad ideas are identified, usually through ridicule. They should be an important part of the business application of IM.
Jeneane has a provocative blog about team blogs as a way of organizing a business: “Gonzo Engaged the most mature of these team blogs in its sixth month, has all the makings of a really smart company.” This has stimulated a discussion at the Gonzo Engaged team blog.
For another view of the conference, see Colin C. Haley’s coverage of the morning.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
