Instant Messaging, Degrees of Privacy, and Efficient Communication

January 16, 2002

One friend sends me instant messages seven or eight times per day, and happy to receive these digital distractions, I respond nine or ten times. I page another friend maybe twice per day and I hear complaints that twice a day is too much. One friend I haven’t seen in nine months messages me once, and I don’t feel like responding.

What’s going on here?

Instant Messenger environments have dramatically lowered the barriers to entry to staying in touch with people, both for better and for worse. It’s easier than ever to “pop in” and ask how someone’s day is going, or even have an online discussion.

Problem is, in online environments, communication participants lack the cues of appropriateness they are used to in simultaneous physical presence or on a phone call. If you’re in the same place as someone else (e.g. if you have made plans for lunch, and then are at lunch), it’s clear that both participants have reasonable permission to communicate to the other. And when the physical engagement or phone call ends, it’s clear that the permission to communicate has expired, because both participants have gone about other business.

Every person we know occupies a different place in the communication permission hierarchy. This may result from the nature of the relationship or from what is simply perceived as appropriate by one or both parties. I send and receive close to 60 e-mail messages per day, and in past jobs have sent and received nearly 150 messages per day. That doesn’t mean everyone wants to send and receive that many messages per day. For a number of reasonable people, anything more than, say, 10 messages per day may be seen as excessive at best, intrusive at worst.

A major problem with Instant Messenger programs is that by lowering the barriers to entry to nearly zero, they encourage inefficient communication. Which begs the question of what exactly is “efficient communication.”

For purposes of this argument, I am defining efficient communication as any instance of communication in which what and how much is said is exactly in line with the expectations and desires of both parties.

One party expects to hear a confirmation that lunch will be at 1:00; the other party IMs him, saying lunch will be at 1:00. An inefficient communication would occur when one party expects to hear that lunch will be at 1:00, and the other party IMs presenting a complex personal issue for prolonged discussion.

On AOL Instant Messenger (“AIM”), for example, each user can set up “buddy lists” so that he will know which friends (or otherwise) of his are online, with the ability to receive instant messages. Any user can add anyone else to his buddy list. The default setting is of universal and complete capability; the onus is on the user to limit communications from unwanted initiators, by putting them on a “blocked” list. More or less, the choice to each user is: open to all, or open to none.

This solution is incomplete, however. First of all, it imposes an unfair cost to each user. If the user does not take the affirmative step of adding someone to a “blocked” list, he or she remains open to instant messages from anyone.

More importantly, however, in the natural course of interpersonal dealings, individual friends or acquaintances are never absolutely in one category or another. I may place tremendous value in weekly online chats with one friend, but that does not mean I want to hear from him every single day. But if I am on his or her buddy list, this person can instant message me as often as he or she wants, resulting in inefficient communication.

Degrees of Privacy: But How?

One way to encourage efficient communication would be to allow degrees of privacy on instant messaging programs. If I log in momentarily to confirm with Dan that lunch is at 1:00, it does not mean I want to be paged by John with a request to discuss yesterday’s Knicks game. If I am in the process of confirming lunch with Dan and am interrupted by John’s unsolicited instant message, John has imposed a cost to my time, at no cost to him. After all, he wants to have this discussion; I do not. It is now up to me to communicate to John that I cannot have this discussion, because I am running out to meet Dan for lunch.

Why not put John on my “blocked” list? Because I want to hear from John from time to time—just not right now. This doesn’t make John a bad person, however; from John’s perspective, he simply sees I am logged in, because I am on his buddy list. My appearance online is a misleading signal that I am ready to receive any and all communication from anyone who has me on their buddy list. That said, it is too cumbersome for me to have to add and remove John—or anyone else—from my “blocked” list depending on how precise circumstances change. This is why the “blocked” list is an incomplete solution to inefficient communication—in real life, individual people go back and forth, depending on the exact time and circumstances.

With some sort of degrees of privacy capability, however, I could confirm lunch with Dan and not face any risk of unwanted communication. Perhaps this could be done with some “stealth” instant messaging capability. I could IM Dan, but not officially “log in” for everyone to see.

But any individual’s preferences of degrees of privacy would change. Perhaps I want to log into Instant Messenger every day and hear routinely from Dan, John and Ted, but not the friend I have not seen in nine months. Or even the friend I saw yesterday. Or the friend I IM’d with yesterday but do not want to hear from today.

The Business Incentive

It’s not clear how exactly this degrees-of-privacy capability could be added to instant messenger environments. But as illuminated by the friend with whom I had lunch today, it is clear that proprietors of instant messenger networks have an incentive to figure something out. Inefficient communication means inefficient use of bandwidth. All of these unwanted messages take up space. They cost money.

If users had an easier way to streamline communications toward an efficient equilibrium, owners of these networks (such as AOL) could save money on unnecessary server and bandwidth capacity. This proposition is particularly compelling because many instant messaging programs are free to users, and it’s not clear how successful they are in promoting other, for-profit goods and services.

In the meantime, instant messengers will have to incorporate a certain tolerance of inefficient communication into their decisions whether to log in at any time. Someone with no tolerance at all should probably not be using instant messenger software. And, in the case of specific unwanted communication, the low-tech but effective way of addressing the problem may be the best one for now: “I’ll get back to you later, I have to go.”

(c) 2002 Soundbreeze Enterprises. All rights reserved.

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