So what is this “persistence” stuff anyway? (pt. 1)

Ryan Gaylor’s comment on persistence vs. presence got me thinking… I think we’re all familiar now with the notion of instant messaging. Text based messages, typically of short-ish length, bursty in frequency, and usually one-to-one.  Some also have the notion of groups or rooms. But, overall, I think most of us have come to agree a tacit and common shared understanding of what basic IM means in practice.

Some systems also add the notion of persistence. What does persistence mean in the context of IM or chat? Let’s first ask the dictionary… Dictionary.com says:

continuity,
durability, enduringness, lastingness, strength - permanence by virtue of the power to resist stress or force; "they advertised the durability of their products"

I think the three key words in this definition, are continuity, enduringness and permanence.  For example, an office or a neighborhood would both be “persistent.”   A neighborhood is relatively permanent, as is a company’s office.  Not permanent like the universe, but enough so that there is a sense of continuity from one day to the next.  You know who the familiar faces are, you can sense when something is different.

So, persistent chat creates in the online world a similar sense of “place” and continuity that you get from feeling the hum of activity around your workplace. It creates some of the same situational awareness – who’s doing what, who’s busy, what’s the mood of the team, etc. Over the course of the day the conversations and the participants are never more than a glance away.

It is effective and deceptively simple – so simple in fact that it is difficult to appreciate without actually having used it.  But I still have described what makes a chat or IM system persistent.
Here is my quick check list for what makes for a “persistent” chat/IM environment. Generally, if you want persistence (and you do, trust me) look for a group chat system where these three additional features are found.

1. Participation is continuous.That is, unlike a phone call where you hang up when you are done, or an email that you file or delete when no longer needed, conversations and goups/rooms remain open even if currently inactive or unobserved by the given user.
2. The up-to-date recent history of each conversation is retained and prominently presented for the user upon re-entry to said conversation (for example, if your computer had been turned off).
3. Support for large group-based conversation channels. Some systems call these rooms, or forums, or channels. Basically, a multiparty discussion where within that forum everyone can see what everyone else chats, as opposed to the one-on-one nature of most IM’s.  Persistence is certainly useful for 1-on-1 classic IM, but it really shines in group settings.
4. Memberships in the aforementioned groups are long-lived.

I think persistence is a central differentiator between consumer/public IM systems and some of the enterprise chat systems. I would also go so far as to say that if your system doesn’t have this notion of persistence you’re barely scratching the surface of IM’s power. There are also some interesting secondary-effects that kick-in uniquely, and IMO perhaps exclusively, as a result of pesistence. I’ll talk about some of those in part 2.

More to follow…..

~ by Eric Kristoff on January 26, 2007.