If my 9-year-old son had to choose between email and IM, there's no question that he'd opt for the latter. I'm guessing he'd choose IM over a browser, if it came down to it. Increasingly, it's his communication tool of choice. It's not unusual for him to IM me on a regular basis. And not just when I'm at the office...even when I'm downstairs. "Hi Mom! What are you doing?" (Stick-in-the-mud that I am, I've told him I will not respond to messages written in IM-speak; he has to use standard written English if he wants me to participate.) At the same time, I've been teaching _my_ mother how to use IM, and using it not just when we're apart, but also to enable private conversations when we're in the same house. According to the New York Times, we're part of a trend. There's an article today by John Schwartz entitled "That Parent-Child Conversation Is Becoming Instant, and Online." Both of those paragraphs raise interesting issues. The first is the effect of changing in-home technology--more wireless, more mobile, more personal--on uses of social software. My son's--and my mother's--growing use of in-house IM has been fueled by their acquisition of wireless-enabled laptop computers. The second is the way computer-mediated commmunication can _enhance_ communication rather than inhibiting it, something that's often not addressed in the "real versus virtual" debates. These are topics worth thinking about in other social software contexts. If you can make tools that are attractive for up-close-and-personal use, there's a much larger market there for you to tap into.