Our enemies friends over at the Yahoo! Messenger blog linked to this article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday:

Roughly one-third of U.S. employees use instant messaging at work, many without the knowledge of their employers, according to a 2006 survey by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute. Many employers remain reluctant to endorse it officially fearing security breaches and distracted employees. But tech consultant Gartner Inc. projects that instant messaging will be the "de facto tool for voice, video and text chat" for 95% of employees in big companies within five years.

True, most IM systems can be distracting, but Skype chat (as we like to call it) is different. The differences are subtle, but allow you to stay productive, as well as having more fun.

Persistent chats

• When you start up Skype, all of the chats you were in the last time you used Skype will still be there. You can restart a previous conversation instantly, even if it involves a group of people.
• If you go offline, you won't lose any messages. Next time you go online, they'll be delivered to you.

Discrete chats

• If you don't want a little ping or animation every time someone sends you a message, you can turn them off.
• Even better, you can turn them off selectively. You can choose to be alerted only when specific keywords are mentioned in the chat, for example.

Flexible chats

• With a single click, you can turn a chat into a call, or a group chat into a conference call.
• Sending a file to everyone in a group chat is as easy as sending a file to one person.

Safe chats

• All messages are encrypted, and go straight from one computer to another most of the time. No servers for the French government to worry about.
• If you're on Windows, and using the latest version of Skype, you can edit your chat messages for a short while after you've written them. If you need to correct a mistake, you can do so.

Bringing this all back home, and with a quick hat tip to Helen Keegan for pointing it out, is the OxIS Internet in Britain report. According to the research, 60% of internet users in the UK use instant messaging — and an earlier report by M:Metrics says that nearly 6% use mobile instant messaging services, such as IM+ for Blackberry.

Looks like we've still got a way to go in the business world, as it's clear from the OxIS report that students are much more likely to use instant messaging than people who work. If IM is to become the "de facto tool for voice, video and text chat" as Gartner suggest, then it's going to have to become a lot more Skype-like.