Top Five Annoying IM Habits

The Most Annoying Practices on IM, the Internet

Are you an annoying IM friend? Want to drive away everyone from your online life by being guilty of annoying IM habits? Believe it or not, there are more than a few ways to lose an IM friend without even typing a single word. Stop being annoying and start getting more IMs with these gentle reminders:

• Using too many emoticons. Emoticons are those little yellow smiley faces (or green alien heads or football shapes) that people use to graphically represent human emotion. While some choose to use such when appropriate, others tell their friends they are a rollercoaster of emotion, ranging from happy to tearful to laughing out loud in a matter of messages. Always use emoticons sparingly.

• Sending audio (especially when we're at work.) Almost as bad as emoticons, some users like to spring audio-enabled graphics (for example, Yahoo! Audibles) on their IM buddies. This is especially annoying for those using IM at work. A coworker of mine and I used to die of embarrassment when a buddy would send a screaming smiley over. Never send an audio-enabled graphic to a friend at work.

• Sending unsolicited invites and files. One of the most annoying problems in instant messaging is receiving an unsolicited invitation to a chatroom, webcam or file transfer without asking first. Always ask before sending. Now could be a bad time.

• Ignoring an away message. When you ignore an away message and decide to send an IM anyway, you put the end-user in a potential bind if your IM contains anything inappropriate or keep sending messages hoping your buddy will answer. Always wait to send an IM when your buddy is available to talk.

• Changing your personalization too often. Consistency is always a nice way to do business, especially when choosing a font, color and other text size for your IM. By changing these items during a conversation, you risk confusing your contact and could even disable them from reading what you have to say. Personalize IM to your liking before you start chatting.

  What Annoying Habits Did We Miss?

  Tell Brandon about the annoying IM habits that aren't on the list or share your own list with everyone in the IM Forums today!