53 Million People Use IM
This is a bit off-topic for me, but I recently read an article on eMarketer.com that said over 53 million people use instant messaging. Though most of them fall in the 18 to 27 age range, altogether over 42% of online adults in the US the technology, and — amazingly — 24% of those instant messagers say they use IM more frequently than e-mail.
Though I know little if anything about what attempts are underway to monetize the medium - and the article doesn't address that issue - I'm sure there is much going on in that respect. If this is an area of particular expertise to you, I'd love to get some feedback.
Posted on Friday, September 17, 2004 at 02:30AM
by
Radiant Marketing Group
in Marketing Strategies
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1 Comment
Radiant Marketing Group
in Marketing Strategies
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1 Comment
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Reader Comments (1)
Nice to see you also noticed that report; I posted some comments about it here. I also have another one about the increase in Instant Messaging usage at work, especially amongst small businesses.
You were asking about monetizing the IM channel; I left an 11 year career with a blue-chip to start my own company, Inside C, and the opportunity I saw in Instant Messaging is what drove that decision.
There's not much money to be made from add-ons to person to person communications (a host of small businesses sell emoticons - the smiley and other faces you can use in conversations) but I thought that if the medium is as well used as being reported, then one should do well with an automated interaction on it. With other words, write software that can take part in a "conversation" with an end user and facilitate a transaction. We refer to this as "Person to Application Messaging" and it's a very new field. In the US, this is sometimes referred to as IM Bots.
Our first product is TravelMessenger as we thought a travel transaction is typically very much Q&A driven, something for which instant messaging is very suitable.
I am also trying to see how small to medium size businesses feel about their travel suppplier, and if a tool like TravelMessenger would be used by an SME - effectively, it's a different channel to market but not as cumbersome as the web.
Your thoughts on this, and indeed from other SMEs would be very welcome.
Riaan