This month, the venerable ICQ chat client turns 20 years old, and does so in a market where chat is more popular and embedded in both consumer and enterprise applications than ever before. (Go here for an excellent rundown of ICQ's history and development).
ICQ's 20th birthday provides an opportunity to reflect on the broader messaging and collaboration tools market, and what lessons the enduring popularity of chat provides, says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Alan Lepofsky.
"There is this plethora of tools we have, whether it's emails, file-sharing, communities—it's all this stuff with structure and yet people still like to just go into a chat tool and type a couple of lines of text," he says. "We have tried to move the industry forward, tried all these different tools. We complain about it: Is there enough adoption of social networking, of things like Yammer. But you never hear in a conversation, is there enough adoption of Messenger?"
Chat, like other forms of messaging, has both pros and cons when it comes to collaboration. "They allow us to be more connected but at the same time, we're distancing ourselves—losing the inflection point of a human voice," Lepofsky says. At the same time, chats are so quick and easy to fire off, it can free up time for other tasks.
But there's a growing problem with chat fragmentation. A typical user today may have Skype, Facebook Messenger, SMS messages, Slack, WhatsApp and any number of other messaging-based applications on their smartphones and laptops that not only churn up more messages but across both personal and business contexts.
It's a recipe for information overload that has four aspects, Lepofsky says. First, there's just too much coming in—call it input overload, he says. Second, as mentioned, chats are coming from too many places. "It's not just your inbox getting bigger," he adds. The third element is "interruption overload," with each source potentially bothering you as you try to work, he says. The fourth is task overload, Lepofsky says: "A lot of chats aren't just informative—they're asking you to do something."
It's a problem that needs a solution. "Not enough work is being done yet to siphon the good from the bad," Lepofsky says. "If chat is becoming a dominant form of communication then it needs to become more useful." In an enterprise context, the big trend now and for the next two to four years will be to add more business functionality within the chat client, as well as more automation, Lepofsky says. "The automation of organizing of content inside chats is the greatest hurdle to be crossed."
