IM&#x27;s good if you&#x27;re at your desk shooting the shit with your friends&#x2F;coworkers. Unlike the phone, it&#x27;s asynchronous, so you can reply when it&#x27;s convenient. You also don&#x27;t have to worry about eavesdroppers. It&#x27;s better than SMS because a longer SMS ends up getting split over multiple messages and they can sometimes get stuck in the ether for a while, and you can use your keyboard instead of holding your phone and making it obvious that you&#x27;re not working. It&#x27;s better than e-mail because you don&#x27;t want a gazillion one-sentence emails of BS going back and forth.<p>I generally keep email for &quot;official&quot; business or more thought-out messages to friends, Hangouts for more banal chit-chat, and I can always go back and search that if it turns into a more important conversation. SMS for the few weirdos who don&#x27;t do Hangouts, and then voice is an absolute last resort. Real-time telecommunication just demands too much immediate attention- whomever I&#x27;m speaking to will say something that leads my mind to wander off and I&#x27;ll miss a sentence or two, and then I can&#x27;t go back and re-read what was said. Hate, hate, HATE calls!