Survey: Corporate IM Use On The Rise

Last year, 27 percent of 4,500 IM users surveyed, said they use IM at work, up 71 percent from 16 percent in 2003. But among the respondents who said they are currently employed, a whopping 43 percent said they use IM on the job, according to the numbers.

The surging numbers illustrate that solution providers supporting business accounts--many of which are running IM that is not sanctioned by IT departments--had better get a handle on IM technologies and management.

America Online, one of three giants fielding "public" or free IM services along with Yahoo and Microsoft, surveyed the respondents between June 7 to 17 and July 26 to 28, said a spokesman from AOL, Dulles, Va.

The respondents were not limited to AOL IM users. This was a survey of the general IM universe, she said. The vast majority of IM users use free, or consumer- based services. The Radicati Group estimates by year's end there will be 831 million active IM accounts, 92 percent of which are on public, consumer-oriented IM networks.

While AOL and Yahoo started to offer paid "enterprise"-class IM services, they've retrenched, offloading that business to partners like Akonix, IMLogic and Facetime Communications. AOL itself had 1,500 AOL @ Work customers, according to the spokeswoman. Microsoft continues its corporate IM push with Live Communications Server 2005, due this fall. IBM's Lotus has long fielded its Sametime enterprise IM as well. With burgeoning regulation on the archiving and storage of messages, these paid IM services may see increased interest, observers say.

Other findings: 59 percent of Internet users use IM; 29 percent send as many instant messages as they do e-mail messages. Probably not surprisingly, a whopping 90 percent of 13 to 21 year olds surveyed said they use IM. Indeed, IM started out as a youth movement, with kids and adolescents seemingly addicted to the services. Their parents and older siblings soon followed suit.

Sixty-one percent of respondents said they use more than one IM application, with AOL remaining the leader with 52 percent of those surveyed saying they use its service.

Many users see IM as a way to avoid the spam and other annoyances plaguing e-mail although "Spim," unsolicited IMs, is starting to become a problem.

In other research cited by AOL, Osterman Research estimates 24 million IM users log on from work, with more than half (58 percent) using AOL Instant Messaging or AIM. AOL also fields the ICQ service.

The survey included 4,510 respondents at least 13 years old in the top 20 markets around th U.S. It was conducted by Opinion Research Corp . for Time Warner subsidiary America Online. , according to new research funded by America Online.