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Instant messaging and e‐mail are popular communication methods on college campuses. However, students' perceptions of the two technologies vary greatly. This study seeks to investigate the differences between instant messaging and e‐mail.

A survey was given to 545 college students.

Instant messaging is perceived as offering many advantages over e‐mail including conveying emotions, building relationships and ease of use (EU). Users are more likely to use symbols with their instant messages to help communicate. College students find both technologies to be easy to use, but show a preference for the EU of instant messaging. However, despite its perceived functional benefits, instant messaging is only the favored form of communication for personal and social relationships.

This paper builds on existing research by discussing information richness, EU, the use of emotions, multimedia, playfulness, flow, cognitive fit theory, bounded rationality, perceived commitment, and user satisfaction in the course of the study.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the use of instant messaging for communications.Design/methodology/approach – The paper describes studies carried out regarding the service, staffing, and economic and technological aspects of instant messagingFindings – Instant messaging was found to be a useful tool in helping to find relevant information to enquiries.Originality/value – The paper shows how developments in software and internet connections have made instant messaging a useful tool.

Web services refer to a specific set of technologies used to implement a Service Oriented Architecture. Thanks to maturing Web‐services standards, and to new mobile devices and application solutions, progress is being made in presenting similar Web‐services offerings in both mobile and fixed networks. To bring that architecture and the solutions it will support to the world of mobility is indeed a significant issue in m‐business applications, because mobile Web services present various advantages: Reduction of the overall cost of development (by reusing existing system components), faster time to market introduction of products (provided by applications’ rapid development and deployment) and remarkable possibilities to emerge new applications with increased functionalities. In addition, the new and forthcoming mobile networks, with native IP connection and high speed transmission capability, allow the development of a variety of modern multimedia services. Multimedia Messaging Services (capable to mix the media types in order to enable more intuitive messaging operation), and Instant Messaging and Presence Services (dedicated for presence, instant messaging, and distribution and sharing of multimedia content in groups of users), provide suitable underlying capabilities to support location‐based and context‐sensitive multimedia services. In this paper we will present the current approaches regarding architectural, functional and security features that allow enterprises to enjoy the benefits of traditional Web services in the mobile multimedia domain.

The use of instant messaging (IM) technology for providing online reference services is increasing by leaps and bounds. This article compares a digital reference service, Morris Messenger, with traditional, face‐to‐face reference, using quantitative and qualitative data from experience with this service at Morris Library, Southern Illinois University. The article addresses differences arising from the medium itself, differences in the categories of reference questions received, using several different categorization schemes, and differences in factors affecting willingness to return, to determine strengths and weaknesses of this medium. Since many libraries are considering implementing such a service, it also describes what it is like for staff to provide reference service this way and suggests ways of addressing some of the challenges of this new medium.

The primary goal of this longitudinal study was to examine whether technology use predicts substance use and/or whether substance use predicts technology use during adolescence.

The sample included 1,031 10th and 11th grade students from the Mid-Atlantic United States. The students completed surveys in school in the spring of 2007 and 2008.

Gender differences in technology use were observed with girls texting, e-mailing/instant messaging, and working on the computer more than boys, and boys playing video games more than girls. Technology use also predicted later substance use for boys and girls. Importantly, technology use was observed to have both negative and positive effects on youth. Substance use also predicted later technology use for girls.

The sample only included adolescents from the Mid-Atlantic United States. In addition, the measures were based on self-reports. Nevertheless, results from this study highlight the importance of considering both negative and positive effects of technology on adolescents. Of note, social types of technology (texting and e-mailing) predicted more substance use for both boys and girls. As such, substance use prevention programs should target these types of technology.

Findings from this study underscore the importance of examining both directions of influence between technology use and adolescent adjustment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of mobile messaging for the purposes of information sharing and social networking based on the types of social ties involved. The authors identify two psychological traits in the model: perceived time shortages (TSs) and anxiety trait. These traits can influence individuals’ mobile-messaging usage by facilitating users’ connections to different social ties in modern urban life.

The authors distributed questionnaires at random on the streets of certain densely populated areas in Hong Kong to young urbanites, who are the dominant users of technological social media. The authors collected 492 valid responses, which the authors analysed via multivariate regression analysis.

Mobile messages are more effectively used to share information within strongly tied groups rather than weakly tied groups. However, there is little difference between weakly and strongly connected groups in terms of the perceived effectiveness of mobile messages used for social networking. Anxious people are more inclined to send mobile messages to individuals with whom they have weak ties, and people who perceived TSs send more mobile messages to individuals with whom they have strong ties.

The rapid nature of information and communication technology has enabled new “richer” forms of mobile media. For instance, WhatsApp allows people to attach images and other multimedia files to their messages, and WeChat provides a location-sharing service that enables users to meet new people based on their friendship preferences. Future studies should examine this trend.

This study contributes to the literature by elaborating the mobile-messaging behaviour of urban citizens who are anxious and perceive TSs within strongly and weakly connected social groups.

Platform‐independent low‐cost instant messaging (IM) may allow small businesses with limited financial and technical resources to communicate and collaborate internally and externally. Little research has been done investigating IM in the small business context. This study seeks to address this research gap and to investigate how small businesses respond to and actively exploit the opportunities brought by IM.

Two comparative case studies were conducted with two US small businesses. The research sites were selected based on the companies' IM usage pattern. Multiple data collecting methods were used including observation, interview, and IM transcripts. Open coding and qualitative data analysis were employed to get rich descriptive findings about IM usage.

IM was found beneficial to small businesses in several ways. The IM usage management is more a managerial issue than a technical one and a set of organizational and managerial factors were identified critical to the achievements of these benefits.

This paper addresses a research gap and investigates the under‐researched IM management issue. The study shows that creative and constructive usage of IM could bring a variety of organizational benefits to small businesses. The findings of this study provide guidance to IM researchers and small business practitioners as to how small businesses can manage IM to exploit its benefits. The comparative study method employed by this study also identifies situations where the utility of IM usage could be limited.

The number of messaging methods and media available – print, telephone, e‐mail, text messaging, fax, etc. – can result in key members of an organisation spending significant parts of their working day simply managing their messages and the resulting responses. Because they arrive in different ways at different times, such management is difficult. Unified messaging attempts to make all messages – however they originate – available via a single interface, allowing priority and importance to be more easily discerned. This raises individual productivity and removes some of the stresses of “keeping up to date and in touch”. This paper explains the technology and suggests that a range of factors has come together finally to make unified messaging a realistic, feasible and effective solution.

Can mobile instant messaging (MIM) make people entering into the state of cognitive absorption (CA)? The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether CA can help explain users’ satisfaction during the process of MIM, while interactivity and interest are operated as determinants of CA as well as directly associated with satisfaction.

This study proposes a satisfaction model that is adapted from the CA theory to investigate MIMs users’ satisfaction with two determinants, interactivity and interest. Specifically, CA is operated as a second-order formative construct with four reflective dimensions, including curiosity, focused immersion, heightened enjoyment and temporal dissociation. Partial least square structural equation modeling was applied to evaluate the causal links of the model with the data collected from 472 LINE users who all had long using experience.

The results showed that CA in MIM, fueled by interactivity and interest, is positively related to satisfaction. Interactivity and interest themselves were also significantly associated with satisfaction. Among them, interactivity has the most influence on satisfaction, followed by interest and CA. Surprised, curiosity and focused immersion did not formative CA in MIM.

The present study focuses on user satisfaction of a specific MIM (LINE) and collects data from users within a specific region (Taiwan). Other researchers must take these constrains into consideration when referencing this study.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study which confirmed that people still enter into the state of CA when using MIM on smartphone, even though the using environment is drastically different from that on desktop. It indicates that prior theories in CA with desktop-based software are still applicable and serve as a basis for more studies in the mobile context to a certain extent, but other factors should also be considered. As interactivity and interest are conducive to CA, leading to user satisfaction, an MIM app can be more popular if the two factors are incorporated.