世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey carried out over three days in early September by goo Research into the use of instant messenging (IM) software. 1,063 members of their internet monitor group successfully completed their private questionnaire; 46.9% of the sample was male, 22.7% in their twenties, 44.0% in their thirties, 22.7% in their forties, 8.4% in their fifties, and 2.3% in their sixties.

I’m both surprised and not surprised by how low the figure for usage at work is, namely less than 9%. Surprised because I get the impression from Slashdot that the vast majority of American workers use it, and in fact it seems to be actively encouraged in many big corporations. Not surprised, because my workplace has the network locked down pretty tight (in places…) so I expect the more common ports are blocked, although you can, of course, use most of the IM software through the HTTP port 80, but then the proxy might have blacklisted the servers. I’d better stop here before I (a) get all bitter and twisted about company policy, and (b) leak some confidential information through my bitterness and twistedness!

Q1: Do you use an instant messenger (IM)? (Sample size=1,063)

At home only	21.7%
At work only	2.5%
Both at home and work	6.1%
Don’t use one at all	44.0%
Don’t know what IM is	25.6%

Q2: Please select all the IM software packages that you use at home. (Sample size=296, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
MSN (Windows Live) Messenger	196	66.2%
Yahoo! Messenger	168	56.8%
Skype	42	14.2%
Google Talk	12	4.1%
ICQ	10	3.4%
IP Messenger	9	3.0%
AOL Messenger	4	1.4%
Other	2	0.7%

At work, the top IM was again MSN Messenger, with 43 out of 91 people using it, or 47%. Yahoo! Messenger was next with 29 users or 32%, IP Messenger third with 21 users or 23%, Skype fourth with 12 users or 13%, and Google Talk fifth with just 6 users or 7%.

When asked what people used IM software for at work, the main usages were for company-internal work-related discussions the company-internal private chatting. Another important use was for confirming if people were at their desks.

Q3: How do you usually start your IM conversations? (Sample size=323)

Just jump straight into the topic	27.2%
“Is now a good time?”, etc, checking if partner is free	51.1%
Start with unrelated smalltalk	16.1%
Other	5.6%

For ending conversations, similar to Q3 above, the most common way was using set phrases to ensure it was OK to excuse oneself, with around 70% using that method. The next most popular was just to stop talking…