Appeal to readership: help needed. What are the solutions to the following two problems, and how can a money-making opportunity be made out of solving them?
Instant messaging seems to be hitting a social barrier in the the affordances of the system. You’re either my buddy, or you’re not. I’m either chatting with you or I’m not. There’s no middle ground.
It just often seems impossible to satisfactorily end a conversation with someone who hasn’t left their keyboard. And I’ve got people on my buddy list who can still track my comings and goings, but I don’t chat with them any more because our relationship was associated with circumstances that have passed (e.g. a work project last year). Yet, I don’t want to drop them off the list for fear of causing offence and poisoning potential future interactions.
Where’s the equvalent of edging away from the party bore in IM?
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How to get rid of your buddies from Stuart Mudie Dot Net
Over at Telepocalypse (which is a great name for a very interesting blog on the theme of "Telecom strategy in the age of end-to-end networks), Martin asks for recommendations for a socially acceptable way to end instant messaging conversations, and...
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How to get rid of your buddies from Stuart Mudie Dot Net
Are there really people with so many buddies that they have hundreds of chat windows popping up whenever they log on? Just because someone is on your buddy list, that doesn't necessarily imply that they want to chat with you all the time.
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How to get rid of your buddies from Blethers.com
Are there really people with so many buddies that they have hundreds of chat windows popping up whenever they log on? Just because someone is on your buddy list, that doesn't necessarily imply that they want to chat with you all the time.
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One simple one that comes to mind is to have a system of user (or group) specific Status... i.e. lets say that my Office user group can be set so that I show as offline to them in the evenings. While it has an active staus during office hours.
The solution would definitely have to be implemented by the IM provider...
Posted by: at October 28, 2003 10:38 PMI can't help feeling that there is a trust and quality play here.
For example, how do you determine the level of trust between two people who IM? If there is an answer to this then the UI for the buddy list can be sorted for trust.
Is there also a way of determining - even through user input - the quality of a realtionship? For example I might be buddies with an old friend, the best man at my wedding and someone I go back almost 20 years with - but we don't IM very often. That doesn't mean I don't trust him or want his name to disappear from my buddy list.
Can trust and quality be better determined through a multi-modal data collection scheme? Heck, if I'm an intergrated telco with local, long distance, wireless and ISP service can I cross reference the data to figure out who I'm most buddies with? and how much I trust them and what is the depth and quality of our relationship?
Sounds like a really cool research project to me!
Posted by: at October 29, 2003 01:42 AMInteresting thread here.
Regarding advanced filtering of presence info to buddies -- looks to be something coming down the pike with enterprise IM players, and perhaps in the future from the public IM services.
Regarding 'relevance' of buddies -- this plays on various projects, like VisiblePath(www.visiblepath.com; see my piece at Darwin(http://www.darwinmag.com/read/090103/social.html) that reviews their technology. It's not IM, but does ranking of the social tightness of relationships.
Posted by: at October 29, 2003 12:24 PMPS The MSN Messenger 'allow' list provides the capability of blocking visibility of your comings and goings to specific others, without removing them from your buddy list. Yahoo also provides a spectrum of privacy settings to minimize visibility in various ways.
Posted by: at October 29, 2003 01:07 PMPS The MSN Messenger 'allow' list provides the capability of blocking visibility of your comings and goings to specific others, without removing them from your buddy list. Yahoo also provides a spectrum of privacy settings to minimize visibility in various ways.
Posted by: at October 29, 2003 01:07 PMIt isn't the technological capability I'm interested in - that's clearly in existence and trivial. The problem is how do you acceptably age out social relationships that are no longer active, without making the other party feel excommunicated from your circle of friends?
And on the micro scale, how do you ever acceptably end a chat session in IM, without saying you are physically leaving the computer, or just not typing any more responses? There's none of that tone of voice thing that you can use on a telephone call to indicate that this conversation ought to draw to a close.
Posted by: at October 29, 2003 01:36 PMGood point.
The issue boils to - is friendship once granted not be revoked ever later? Just as in the offline world - striking off the number of an old friend is not really symbolic of anything ( the intent of not keeping contact was probably made long time ago ), in the online world striking a buddy off your list does not mean anything - he is still free to send you messages ( unless you block him, but then now you have made him aware of your intentions ). Just as I doubt if in the real world you would go to a co-worker with whom you collaborated in the past and say, "dont call me again".
One way out would be for IM clients to keep a folder called "NotReallyMyBuddies". If you dont get/send messages from a buddy in a while, he gets moved to this folder ( which visually is collapsed in the tree-view - so you really dont "see" them ). If he makes contact again, he goes right back to where he was.
As for the micro scale: Ending a conversation on IM works best for me by telling the other side I have to get back to work / the movie on TV / whatever. Most people understand.
But then again, nowadays I only go online on ICQ when I really have time to chat. Otherwise I just switch it on for a sec to see who is there and then turn it off again.
The long term problem has rarely arisen for me, because switching between operating systems about once a year (Win->Linux->Win) I did not care to copy all but the most interesting contacts in my buddy list. People who did not get copied either got back to me and thus reappeared, or were lost.
That is not so bad because I did not need their info anymore, and because many accounts are disused anyway by now. BTW: Same problem as with that disused weblog thing: people tend to change their medium now and then. Doesn't mean weblogs are dead!
this is sooooo stupid!!!!!!!!
Posted by: at April 30, 2004 08:44 PM