Does anyone use Instant Messaging software within their business?

My company generally uses skype. Unless we're all working on documents online, then we use the tools inside google drive.

We use Pidgin/Jabber here. It's great for getting an instant reply from someone if speaking face to face isn't convenient. Our staff download it on their personal computers too so we can still use it if they're working from home.

It's pretty good - very occasionally it crashes, but it's generally fixed if I just log back in again.

Glad you're enjoying the forum

Interesting question, I've got a different view point, I think Instant messaging can detract or be disruptive for business.

Back in corporate land, we use to use a tool from IBM called sametime, which had all the employees in it's address book, and people would ping you constantly all day long!

It was a nightmare, instead of people thinking for themselves, it's quicker and easier to "ping" you and ask you a question, you then get distracted from what you were doing. Even worse, you could "conference in" other people, and many time you find yourself bumped into a virtual meeting and thrown in at the deep end. A lot of these conversations were pointless and wouldn't have warranted a phone call.

Working from home, I also used to use Microsoft Messenger , but same issue, getting pinged all day long, and you feel inclined to respond, where as you normally schedule time to respond to email.

Even now, with Facebook, you logon and people start randomly pinging you, so I have switched it off. My idea of social media is I can pick and choose the conversations, and when and where to respond, as opposed to IM which I found disruptive and in my view lowers productivity.

I could see the benefit of a lone worker/home worker feeling part of the team, but if they need to be constantly nattering in realtime, then they are probably better suited to working in an manned office?

Or am I just been a grumpy dinosaur?

If you wanted to try it as a free experiment, why not use something like MS Messenger, skype or god forbid Facebook

Pros and cons of everything I guess. Personally I never felt that IM was an intrusion. Here, we just use Gtalk for IM and Google drive for document sharing. Using IM is better than screaming across the room every now and then. It is honestly and indispensable part of work.Unless of course your job is based only on one individual work, which is very rare. But getting dragged into a meeting before you know it is just too much.

Hi guys, thanks for all the feedback

We use it mainly to catch up and take stock of things that need to be done. For everything else, we have our own system that we use for secure documents etc.