Poll: IM for business - is it all or nothing?

Long used by office workers for keeping up with their friends while stuck at their desks, instant messaging is maturing into a full-fledged business tool.

Nearly two fifths (39 per cent) of silicon.com poll respondents have a 'buddy list' on which between 75 and 100 per cent of the contacts listed are either colleagues or people they only contact for work reasons. This is an increase of 11 percentage points on the same reader poll conducted two years ago.

While six per cent of poll respondents admit to a buddy list solely made up of friends and family, this figure stood at 18 per cent back in 2005.

The percentage of respondents identifying between 25 and 50 per cent of their buddy list as workmates or business-based contacts has decreased slightly in the past two years. This suggests IM is initially used as a way of keeping in touch with friends but workers inevitably add colleagues and using it for business purposes too.

But while the majority of the poll respondents have a high proportion of workmates as IM contacts, it remains to be seen whether work is all they talk about.

The next generation of UK workers are already embracing IM as a workplace tool - a recent survey found more than half of the teens questioned expect to use instant messaging in the workplace to communicate with colleagues.

But not all today's workers are IMing their managers to ask for Friday off - more than a third (36 per cent) of respondents to the reader poll said they don't use IM at work at all, a slight increase on 2005's figure (31 per cent).