In my library science readings, we recently had some articles on reference via chat. They mentioned two things about real-time chatting (IM, Gmail, that sort of thing) that I found rather interesting:
First, conversations can be disjointed without actually ruining the flow of things. You know, you say something, and then before the other person can reply to that you say something else, and then they reply to the first thing, and then you reply to their response, and they reply to the second thing, and so on. By all rights it ought to be extremely confusing, and yet somehow it isn’t. That’s cool. :)
Second, they said…oh, drat. I can’t remember what the second thing was. So I’ll have to come up with something on my own. Hmm… Well, I myself use Gmail chat pretty much every day to keep in touch with many of my friends. It’s perfect for times when I’m doing other things but also want to talk, so I can do both. (How well I do that is another question. :)) And yes, sometimes it’s distracting, but it’s not really that hard to close Gmail. The benefits far outweigh the costs. I mean, e-mail and chat rolled into one glorious whole? I can’t imagine life without Gmail chat anymore. :)
No, Google’s not paying me to say this. But if they tried, I can’t say I’d put up much of a fight. :P